At my age, 52, one tends to just skip whatever repetition of the same narratives and topics already fleshed out by countless podcasters and critics, but Essentialsalts, however lengthy, could keep me listening to the very end of video. Thanks for posting!
@@virtue_signal_😂😂😂. It's been my 'policy' to not want a reveal of the bearer of the voice because like a name, when you hears it, one creates an image of the bearer. When one gets to see the bearer, the eyes contradict the image and in most cases I have found this is always lower than the image. But whatever case it is for Essentials he has the voice and a way of opening the topic to a new level. He makes Nietszche available to common fella while introducing a new way of looking mistakes made in the past that call for a present demand for psychological mutation thru insight and immediate change. I am first drawn by his voice but I am now a student of N thru E.
I had read Nietzsche on this topic quite a long time ago, and as I grew older and I understood more and more on life and how fragile we are against suggestion and effects caused by external sources which trigger reactions and response in us, I could never believe anything remotely close to a "free" will, what I'm concerned with as of now is more in line of "can one achieve a freer will by understanding his drives and emotions and things which trigger a response within him"
Our senses are like open wounds, and the controllers at the helm of information sources are eager to program us with the worst and most destructive kinds of suggestions imaginable
I've just listened to this again, and feel I understand Nietzsche's position better now. I have long understood the importance of the question, but found inconsistencies in the views of most philosophers, including Schopenhauer, although he's usually very rational. We'll done for pointing out the weaknesses of the arguments of Hitchens and Peterson, too. Both brilliant in their own ways, but neither is a philosopher! I'm also starting to see how much Jung owed to Nietzsche - in fact, the essence of his life work. All this is immensely valuable, and at the risk of sounding hyperbolic, I'll say it again: these podcasts are actually life-changing. Thank you once again.
For some reason this part of Nietzsche's philosophy is greatly overlooked. It might be because people like to think of Nietzsche as an existentialist and people that tend to associate themselves with that movement tend to dislike fatalistic views. Anyhow I appreciate this video.
@@SbsvwvwvEbebebeb Yes, and no. The reason reason is effective for changing minds and educating people and helping them think about problems and problem solving more wisely is because there is no free will. So, if someone pays attention, and learns quickly, we'd want to reward that fact about them. Operant conditioning works because there is no free will. It's influence that the awarded did not choose,and now they'll want to repeat their victories. That conditioning works on some, and just creates jealousy in others. Jealousy displays and anger at success should be punished and marginalized, because that too is more conditioning that the jealous receiver didn't choose or produce themselves. We demonstrate value for that jealous person by punishing their display of jealousy, their immature and selfish view of success.
Dude this video is incredible. We’re chewing on some unbelievably dense and meaningful topics here. Thank you so much for posting this. The implications are astounding
Nietzsche correctly identified a person as a collection of drives. But I am more than simply the sum of my drives. I am also the thing that is aware of those drives, as well as the conflicts and contradictions that exist between them. I attempt as best I can to reconcile and resolve these conflicts and contradictions, and by this process, I grow into the person I strive to become. To me, this struggle constitutes the "meaning" of my life. It's the reason that my life matters. My drives are what I interact with, not what I am. What I am is *that which chooses* what I am. Nietzsche wished to remove morality from our mental universe. But without moral reasoning, how do we navigate this process of self determination? On what basis do we choose who we are? I suspect Nietzsche's answer is something along the lines of: "replace ethics with aesthetics". Live your life as a work of art, he might say. I admit, this prospect has a certain appeal to me. The sublime chaos of creation is undeniably sacred, and must be honored. But I do not think the flame of creation is sufficient on its own. Our quest also requires a map. If we don't have one, we must make one. This is a necessary part of the journey, in my opinion. But if we abandon cartography entirely (which is what ~I think~ Nietzsche is saying), then the entire project of becoming human is rendered impossible and pointless. And once again, we're back to that old cliche, nihilism. It's probably the least creative accusation you could hurl at Nietzsche, but it's popularity is not an accident. It's the core issue on which his ideas succeed or fail, I think. If Nietzsche has a real solution to the problem of nihilism, then the project he's proposing becomes incredibly compelling. I'm still undecided as to whether he has such a solution. If I ever figure it out, I'm sure it will be as a result of listening to the content on this channel. I'm certain that there's no better source of Nietzschean scholarship available anywhere outside of a graduate seminar than this channel is providing. It's a true gift to the world that this knowledge is freely available, and I thank you very much for your generosity.
You now need to say what you are not, and find consistency. It is not possible to be fully aware of those drives all the time, like digestion for example, it is automatic, so awareness might be an invention to explain the unknown, like the invention of gods etc.
Nietszche’s tablets will be broken, his master and slave morality philosophy suffers from his misunderstanding of classes or what were more like castes before the 1700s. To put it shortly, his ubermensches die off and the weak willed inherit the earth and proliferate slave morality in churches and only allow a certain class into the free mason lodges to learn stoicism and master morality… nietzsche himself suffers from this false consciousness, one of the true suspicions of the masters of suspicion that Marx understood. It’s funny because nietzsche thought Marx was weak willed for wanting everyone to be the same class despite the fact that If everyone was given same chance there would be far more ubermensches and napoleons instead of just one every 1000 years.
I think the problem with the idea that you can replace morality with aesthetics is very similar to the mistake libertarians make when they. Think they can replace the state with private institutions. The nature of something is not what you call it, but what it does. e.g. If you take policing, infrastructure, administration and tax collecting from a national government and give it over to corporations, those corporations simply become the government and over time will be entirely indistinguishable from what existed a century or two before even if they still call themselves Cash Money Inc. At a very root level aesthetic judgments and moral judgments proceed from the same exact kernel of the soul, which is not based on reason but on instinct, impulse and a kind of transcendent preference. over time we have a tendency to systematize these and sometimes impose them on other people. So in other words, if you try to navigate the world with aesthetic judgments versus moral ones given time you will eventually end up in the same exact position where you are turning that judgment against yourself, where you are struggling with contradictions, and where you have internal agony. The conflict or obstacle that Nietzsche is trying to remove from the World by removing morality from the world cannot be removed because it is not a feature of morality, it is a feature of Being Human and being alive. morality is simply the main way it is expressed, but it would be expressed in a different way if that was not an option.
I agree that a "map" is necessary. As Camus said, if love is enough, life would be too easy; Likewise, if it were enough to be your own creative God, it would be very easy, any animal could be it. I think that Nietzsche in Zarathustra does also propose to make a map, but one based on your own perceptions and drives. I believe that this should include learning from other sources (whether Nietzsche believed it or not), wholism is necessary. As Bruce Lee said, learn from everything and take what works. But we must balance it by avoiding being a jack of all trades and a master of none, that's where you have to be a nietzschean.
I think Peterson's point is less about the idea that the intuition of free will is "good" because it is true in the face of some REAL fact or order how the universe works, and more about how it is the foundation for a morality that he finds to be healthy from a psychological standpoint. The technicality that this morality may be based on a lie does not matter so much for Peterson if that “lie” is juxtaposed to a truth that is a part of independent reality ( capital R REAL). Peterson and those he is influenced by put heavy emphasis on developmental stages of consciousness, this means that morality and belief would operate like traits did for Darwin - the bad ones dying out and the ones that aided in survival remaining in the phylogeny as culture develops. There is a sort of moral and cultural “survival of the fittest” that plays out for thinkers like Peterson. All he is saying is that modern human beings possess something like a “cultural phenotype” or disposition to trust the intuition that our choices are free and it has led to positive consequences from a developmental point of view. Peterson views western society as something like a quasi-successful organism that has evolved the right cultural traits to survive the world, and find meaning in it - free will is a fundamental element of this evolved organism. With this in mind, being wary of "getting rid of it" when it comes to free will is paramount. If human society for the past 50,000+ years has been trying their hand and believing certain things, the intuition for free will emerged as random as something like a "trait" does for Darwin. Those who had a proclivity to think this way and act on it are clearly the successful ones because we all think like this even though there is no good or "natural" reason to. So taking for granted the way we think and morality we have as something invented rather than developed and doing away with it is all Peterson is warning against in regards to free will. Furthermore I do not think Nietzsche's treatment of FW in Human all too Human 39 is a "takedown" in any form of Peterson's position, as laid out above. Nietzsche's understanding, to me, seems to be in a similar vein. Culture and the individual developed and are subject to that process, there are careful orders in place and it is no small or safe task to unchain yourself from them. Great video man, love the podcast.
>"Peterson and those he is influenced by put heavy emphasis on developmental stages of consciousness, this means that morality and belief would operate like traits did for Darwin - the bad ones dying out and the ones that aided in survival remaining in the phylogeny as culture develops." This is a great point and one I don't give Peterson credit for often enough, so thanks for raising it. That being said, I think Peterson himself would agree that beliefs and psychological tendencies can survive over long generations while nevertheless being harmful or dangerous - or, at least, harmful or dangerous when allowed to run amok, unchecked by reason. We might consider the impulse towards making decisions based on compassion, or to creating equality. Peterson himself recognizes that these are tendencies which exist for an evolutionary reason but when maximized become harmful. Or, let's take another example: authoritarianism. Peterson seems convinced that human structures of governance are more fragile than we believe, having to be constantly balanced on the edge of order and chaos, and that they can fall into anarchy or tyranny relatively quickly. He believes that the psychology of mass movements presents a recurring threat of authoritarianism and utopian thinking, that has to be actively counterbalanced with logic and argument or else we will get swept up in it again. Sure, tyrannies never last, in Peterson's view, but we're never safe from the psychological forces that allow for them to take hold. Why have I belabored this point, unrelated to free will? Well, because I would agree with Peterson that we can find recurring tendencies in thought which serve some function now as well as in their origin, but which still saddle mankind with potentially pathological behavior if we don't examine in them in the light of reason. I assert that this is what Nietzsche is doing with free will. He's arguing that, for one: we didn't believe in the libertarian viewpoint on free will in all ages, that is an innovation of Christianity, a relatively new religion (and you don't really see this view at all in the East, such as in classical China). Sure, there have been variations on the idea going back to the time of the Greeks, but I would hold that then, as now, most people do not fully comprehend the claim being made if we accept the position of libertarian free will. Given that it seems to be so strong a tendency in modernity to create this conception of the self as an uncaused cause, perhaps by demonstrating how the concept is largely incoherent (which I feel N. demonstrates), reason will dispel our mistaken thinking. Nietzsche would also argue, in fact, that the free will delusion is responsible for many of the ressentiment-based authoritarian movements that Peterson says we must apply reason to guard against: that seeking revenge isn't possible without free will. >"Furthermore I do not think Nietzsche's treatment of FW in Human all too Human 39 is a "takedown" in any form of Peterson's position, as laid out above. Nietzsche's understanding, to me, seems to be in a similar vein. Culture and the individual developed and are subject to that process, there are careful orders in place and it is no small or safe task to unchain yourself from them. " I think Nietzsche contradicts Peterson's view on a fundamental level. Peterson thinks that we should check our conclusions against what our moral intuition (conscience) tells us. Nietzsche is saying that what our moral intuitions tell us is not an eternal truth, but one relative to our perspective, and one which can be changed - and therefore that checking our conclusions against our conscience is not a trustworthy process. He would certainly agree that a trait shaped over tens of thousands of years is very strong, but I would challenge the supposition that free will has been a part of human culture for that long. All things considered, it's a relatively new idea. It's part of the West's Christian baggage: and Peterson would agree with Nietzsche that the West, in spite of being a successful civilization, carries a great deal of guilt with it today, which is expressed in the language and actions of the wokeists. While he will probably never recognize that this wokeist guilt is Christian in nature, but I think it is clear that a culture could be successful while still carrying harmful phenotypes. Caution is always prudent - but I don't believe the free will complex is anywhere near as integral or essential than is suggested here. Thank you very much for the thoughtful criticism. And thanks for listening!
@@untimelyreflections Thanks for the very thought out and enlightening reply! There is a lot to unpack here and I really want to explore some of the ideas that you nodded me towards. There is no doubt that harmful phenotypes exist in the cultural human genome, but I think there is good reason to argue for the importance of free-will as one of the good ones. I suppose a lot of my thought is influenced by thinkers like Jung, Erich Neumann, eventually Peterson, and only slightly augmented with Nietzsche which can make my analysis of his works rather picky and biased at times. I take what I can get from Nietzsche and from the comfort of my Jung, Neumann, and others I am scared to really peek into some bold claims he makes about our position as moral agents. I guess I see the picture of the old stories of the bible and ancient mythology as depicting human beings emerging from something like a circular way of life in which they are ruled by instinct and determinism. Consciousness (whatever you take that to be, fundamentally the self awareness of one's thought and action with an attached conception of self) made us aware of what we were doing but this does not mean we yet believed it to be attached to anything like choice. Nietzsche in Human, All too Human allows me to clearly meditate on the idea that our emergence from this determinism, or “moment in the garden” came not when we became free due to our evolving consciousness, but when we believed ourselves to be so. The phenomenological state of the world for conscious human beings before this belief was one characterized by a paradoxical state of paradisal dissatisfaction. We were unable to suffer morally because we did not believe it was at all possible to “make mistakes.” However, with no mistakes comes no satisfaction of being right or correct. It turns out, from literature on neurology, that our nervous system and cognitive setup really values being “correct” or aligned with the world in a certain way that is accurate. (**This point is highly underdeveloped here and possibly confusing, but it is from Peterson and the cognitive science that I am into). In order to be something higher, we told ourselves we were free. It really may not matter, for me and my philosophical position, whether we are TRULY free or not. It seems that what matters is that belief of freedom as a tool for progression and additive cognitive machinery that changes the way the world appears to us. As the cognitive scientists put it - the world changes with each form or thought or belief, our belief that we are free is making a certain way of acting in the world possible. I believe this way of acting in the world is outlined far earlier than just western Christianity (which I will grant does give a high degree of attention to incompatible free will), but as far back as ancient stories and myth.
@@IvhehThank you for initiating this train of thought. I have only one question with regards to how we're thinking of the difference between "rational" and "intuitive" thinking, particularly in the light of Iain McGillchrists work on the way our brains perceive reality from two distinct perspectives. And my question is "are we attributing enough credit for the intuitive side given that McGillchrist has made the bold claim that our rational side is far more prone to delusion than our intuitive side?" I get that it's our intuitive side that initiates the rational side to create narratives that might be an example of the delusions Iain might be pointing at but that opens up an entirely different way of thinking about what is causing the disconnect between people discussing these things. An example of this might be in the problem of people with powerful intellects like many posting above assuming that using that intellect as a measure to determine who might have influence in a culture when its not obvious to me that intellect nor "rationalising" is the metric to flourish from a Darwinian perspective.
@@untimelyreflections Peterson attempting to explain Nietzche is like attempting to understand an auctioneer speaking in a foresight language. The man is a total bullshit artist all the way down to his hair dresser's latest perm.
“Some think this view absolves you of your responsibility for your acts. But actually you’re responsible for much more than your acts. That which is said to constrain or determine you biologically is actually what you are. It does restrain your acts according to its inherent ways of desiring and acting, but you are this it, and it decided to be, so actually you are responsible for much more, you’re responsible for what you are. You are responsible for the good and bad things that happen to you, for any accident or disease you might experience! Actually it was all going to happen to you just the way it did at the moment of your birth or conception and even before, at the moment your parents had a glint for each other in the eye. There is fundamentally no difference between you and that glint.”BAM
The free will question has basically plagued me since i was introduced to it in a class 10 years ago. I read Alan Watts early on and saw that this sense of separateness is an illusion. I’m also very influenced by Aleister Crowleys concept of True Will, where he likens us to stars with a certain orbit. It’s basically the “become what you are” we see here. One can make sacred the task of simply expressing what one is day to day, which culminates in the life as a whole. Still, the cultural bias of free will is so hard to break from and i often wonder if it’s even possible to truly integrate the idea of fatalism. We will always be treated as if we have this separate moral agency with every move we make. Some of course more than others who may have some kind of mental illness or whatever. But for the most part, i think most people in the West simply live in a world of free will and responsibility, and even though i’ve believed in fatalism for years, i still feel i have to keep reminding myself.
Where can I find the quote "the wise punishes not because men have done wrong in the past, but so that men will not do wrong in the future"? You say it's in the same passage you mentioned before (which would be Aphorism 102), but I can't find it. You say it at 1:15:00
Human All Too Human Book I, 105. Recompensing Justice.-Whoever has completely comprehended the doctrine of absolute irresponsibility can no longer include the so-called punishing and recompensing justice in the idea of justice, should this consist of giving to each man his due. For he who is punished does not deserve the punishment, he is only used as a means of henceforth warning away from certain actions; equally so, he who is rewarded does not merit this reward, he could not act otherwise than he did. Therefore the reward is meant only as an encouragement to him and others, to provide a motive for subsequent actions; words of praise are flung to the runners on the course, not to the one who has reached the goal. Neither punishment nor reward is anything that comes to one as one's own; they are given from motives of usefulness, without one having a right to claim them. Hence we must say, "The wise man gives no reward because the deed has been well done," just as we have said, "The wise man does not punish because evil has been committed, but in order that evil shall not be committed." If punishment and reward no longer existed, then the strongest motives which deter men from certain actions and impel them to certain other actions, would also no longer exist; the needs of mankind require their continuance; and inasmuch as punishment and reward, blame and praise, work most sensibly on vanity, the same need requires the continuance of vanity.
@@untimelyreflections What do you think of this video, would be fascinating to hear your approach on it, if Nietzsche could have been a gnostic. th-cam.com/video/qKMh1swCBNE/w-d-xo.html
Will admit upfront I’m slow, but did not fully catch how Nietzsche differed from hard determinists (I’ll re-listen to this video). Would like to know how Nietzsche’s view of free will fits or doesn’t with the view of a hard determinist like Robert Sapolsky (don’t want to put words in his mouth, but seems to be his position per his videos). Really liked your video, will look for more.
the last 30 minutes reminded me of two passages in zarathustra that seem super relevant to the will and freedom and revenge and punishment. in the hollingdale translation from penguin, the two sections are called the spirit of gravity and of redemption
Nietzsche’s Critique of Free Will EXPLAINED: Why Nietzsche exchanged “moral responsibility” for Fate 00:01 🤔 The topic of free will is often met with apathy and indifference, as people tend to hold positions that align with their preconceptions and intuitions. 01:57 🤨 The argument that we have free will is often based on intuition and personal experience, which may not necessarily be supported by evidence. 03:19 🧐 The debate over free will often centers around the idea that individuals have the experience of making choices, but whether those choices are truly free remains a point of contention. 07:34 🔄 Compatibilists argue that free will and determinism can coexist, suggesting that preserving the concept of free will has societal benefits. 10:54 🕊 Nietzsche challenges the conventional belief in free will and moral responsibility, suggesting that it is a result of fear of the consequences of abandoning this belief. 17:01 🔄 In prehistoric times, moral judgments were based on the consequences of actions rather than attributing moral responsibility to individuals' intentions, as we do today. 19:53 🧠 Nietzsche approached the issue of free will from an anthropological and psychological perspective, examining how human conceptions of themselves and their actions have changed over time. 20:23 🤔 Nietzsche hypothesized that the shift in human views of moral responsibility and free will was influenced by changes in self-conception, particularly the transition from viewing humans as a confluence of internal forces to a solitary soul governing the body. 21:21 🇨🇳 In ancient China and Nietzsche's view, the human being was seen as a product of various natural forces and elements, similar to Nietzsche's perspective, which challenges the notion of a single, autonomous self. 22:19 🤷♂ Nietzsche criticizes the modern view that assigns moral value to intentions, suggesting that it is an error based on language and that actions should be judged by their consequences. 23:18 🔀 Nietzsche describes a historical shift from valuing actions based on their consequences to valuing actions based on their origin in intention, a change influenced by aristocratic values and faith. 24:52 🧐 Nietzsche distinguishes between two stages: the premoral stage where actions were judged by consequences, and the moral stage where actions were judged by intention, emphasizing the shift from external consequences to internal intentions. 27:18 💡 Nietzsche attributes the belief in free will and moral responsibility to the upper classes and their experiences of making decisions and giving commands, which influenced the idea of an independent will governing actions. 28:40 🙇♂ Nietzsche suggests that viewing oneself as a rational ego governing the body is an error, and he leaves room for a virtue ethics approach to morality based on understanding actions as an outflowing of one's nature. 30:03 🧘 Nietzsche views the true self as a multiplicity of often competing drives, and actions result from unconscious urges, with conscious intentions serving as post-hoc narrations. 35:00 🤯 Nietzsche argues that ultimately, individuals cannot be held responsible for their nature, motives, actions, or the effects of their actions, challenging the concept of moral responsibility. 36:32 🌟 Nietzsche envisions a potential extramoral phase where actions' value lies in the unintentional aspect, suggesting a move beyond conventional moral judgments based on intentions. 39:21 🐷 Nietzsche illustrates the idea that humans might one day view individuals as amoral entities, similar to how we perceive animals today, without assigning moral responsibility for their actions. 40:49 🤔 Nietzsche's rejection of free will is a core element of his philosophy. 41:14 🧠 Nietzsche's disagreement with Schopenhauer on free will influenced his own views. 42:14 😟 Guilt is a common human feeling that Nietzsche believes is tied to the concept of free will. 43:48 🤯 Nietzsche argues that the feeling of guilt arises from the belief in free will and moral responsibility. 45:21 🤔 Our ability to imagine alternate choices after making a decision contributes to the belief in free will. 46:52 👥 Nietzsche connects the concept of moral responsibility, free will, and guilt in the human mind. 49:45 💭 Nietzsche explores the idea that beliefs reveal more about individuals than about truth. 53:10 🧐 Nietzsche criticizes determinists who see external causes as overwhelming their own will. 55:39 😩 Some people embrace the idea of unfree will to avoid facing their own weaknesses. 58:04 🤷 Nietzsche acknowledges the complexity of human motivations regarding the belief in free will and unfree will. 01:00:53 🤯 Nietzsche challenges the traditional notion of causality and the ego as explanations for human behavior. 01:02:15 🧠 Nietzsche rejects the concept of free will in both libertarian and compatibilist senses, as he does not believe in a unitary self as an uncaused cause of thoughts and actions. 01:04:38 🔄 Nietzsche's framework for understanding human beings opposes both free will and determinism, focusing on moral responsibility as the core of his critique. 01:05:44 🌌 Nietzsche challenges the concepts of causality and free choice, advocating for a perspective that embraces necessity and fate as explanations for human actions. 01:07:12 🪙 Nietzsche's view of human will can be described as fatalism, where individuals accept their fate as a necessary consequence of their nature, and greatness lies in embracing it. 01:09:14 🌟 Nietzsche envisions a future extramoral phase of humanity where revenge and the desire for retribution are replaced with a more enlightened perspective on justice and morality. 01:10:14 ⚖ Nietzsche suggests treating criminals as individuals in need of medical care and psychological help rather than as inherently evil beings deserving punishment. 01:21:54 🔄 Nietzsche encourages individuals to seek and discover what they are meant to become, emphasizing that one's nature and fate are continually evolving.
To me, free will means a sense of agency/autonomy in decision making exists, then i would say that we have "free will", but we can't be completely free in what we like, who we are and what we are made of and the makeup of our drives and will. But if we are aware of everything that makes up the human creature to overcome it, we direct our "free will" with everything that we're made of to the most that we can become. Even as a compatibilist, I've replaced the idea if free will with will-to-power.
People who tend to argue for absolute free will are also people who rely on their image and "credit" to succeed. Why would you not argue for max agency if you were successful ? Or especially if you're an academic trying to get footnotes ?
19:00 I think this pre-historic view of morality had to be dispensed with. As it is retroactive - you do things and you are judged by the result be it good or bad, it has no notion of redemtion, or it cannot be conceived in such framework. It's very blind to the possibility of improvement or the intent of the doer. If a man walks on a tight rope and falls he will be laughed at as being bad. In fact i think this view is still present in majority of people.
1:12:00 You can only afford to tolerate small slights against yourself. Justice is there for people who are afraid for their life. Noble people who have nothing to be afraid of dont need to worry about it as they are powerfull to allow some parasitism. But most people are always going to be meek and will require justice to be at peace with themself.
I think David Bentley Hart has the best argument against Free Will... even though I'm not a Christian & think it's base presupposition the most absurd idea one could possess. Humans can't have Free Will because they make wrong choices all of the time, or those that go against their own best interest. A Free Will would be an Omniscient Will, which would never make a choice wrong for itself, and this, as experience shows... is not the case for humans. He uses an example of one knowing what one's choices are, which are... a thing that will kill one behind one door, and a beautiful woman behind the other door... that one could marry if chosen, and that obviously... a Free Will would NEVER choose the former door, yet humans invariably choose the former much of the time. This is a defective, thus, not Free Will, whatever it is encumbered by. An encumbered will isn't free, and our will's are so encumbered & qualified by things because we are finite beings... that it can't be " Free. " Just had my coffee, so I hope I explained it clearly, and didn't do injustice to Hart's position...
Nicely done. Thank you. My own take on free will is that I doubt nature would have selected for us such large brains and wrinkly frontal lobes only to give us the illusion of being able to plan, weigh pros and cons and make decisions -- which I consider all components of free will. I also think that any discussion of what free will is or isn't -- whether by Nietzsche (my favorite writer) or anyone else -- always benefits from staying away from the moral question as long as possible -- since that is not why we evolved to have whatever it is we call free will. First figure out how what we call free will gives us a edge in survival -- helps us to hunt that water buffalo over there -- and only then look at how we end up applying this phenomenon to our moral lives.
What people say when they mean "free will" is that the will is free from any cause. That one couldn't say that 'my brain chemistry made me do this' because ultimately the metaphysical self overrides all physicality. It stems from the idea that god made us, but anything we do after that is on us and not on god. Of course it is patently absurd to say that we are free from causes. Even if our behavior appears random on the face of it, which it never is even in mentally ill people, there is an underlying cause. Fundamentally one cannot be "free" because there is nothing in the universe that is not interconnected with something else in some way. Planning for the future isn't really free will. Many animals plan for the future too, instinctually even. We know for sure that some people are better than others at forward planning and we can show this with brain biology dictating whether or not a person is more impulsive than another person. The only thing we have is that we *feel* free in regards to the future. We *feel* as though we could pick x choice over y, but the reality is that we do not know why. Our brain confabulates reasons why we do what we do, but we don't know that those are the real reasons why we do what we do. This is also assuming the argument that because nature selects for something, that it must provide efficient utility. Nature isn't perfect. In fact a lot of times nature throws its hands up and says 'eh good enough'. For example, we've kept our appendix despite not needing it anymore. It's believed it was once used for digestion, but no longer. Well now it's just an inert organ, doing nothing, taking up space in our bodies. Sometimes it enflames, bursts, and causes sepsis. It would be efficient just to select for people to just not have appendixes anymore, wouldn't it? So it is equally likely with our sense of free will that this is a random mutation, a byproduct of our capability to be conscious of ourselves.
@@cabellocorto5586 Yes, I agree, of course there are causes, but in living creatures causes do not lead to one predetermined effect like in classical physics. Rather the causes pushes us to act in some way -- but the way we act, the effect so to speak can still have something to do with us making a choice. I'm informed in this by Nietzsche -- who at various times doubted both cause and effect and free will -- thinking that they were a human boplar construct that works well in day to day life, but eventually has its limitations. What Nietzsche said was that instead of free will, there were rather many wills, some stronger, some weaker, but all vying to some degree in the individual. What this means to me, as an example, is in the case of a certain kind of stimulus a person may be driven as always to seek escapism in drugs -- his habitual response -- but that doesn't have to be a done deal, even though by habit that is what usually happens -- rather the path to the future in a case like this is open -- so that it can sometimes be the case that the person reacts to the stimulus different this time and chooses to go into treatment. As a final example, the way I look at it is like with quantum mechanics -- meaning it is only when the interaction happens that the wave collapses and all the dominos _then_ line up behind it giving the illusion of determinism. But until that moment the path the particle was going to take was open, undetermined. I think eventually scientist will realize determinism is an illusion as much as free will. Two ideas that works very well but an illusion nontheless. What's really going on beyond the veil of our sences and perceptions is probably something else altogether. But I would opt for thinking that human lives and the lives of some animals are not determined.
@@longcastle4863 When you say that causes do not push us to act in some way but only inform our decisions, you're assuming that you can know all causes. If someone is more likely to use drugs to cope with stress, of course that doesn't mean that person is guaranteed to do so. However there's a high statistical likelihood of that being the case. But even if it is not guaranteed, that doesn't mean it's not determined. There are a multitude of other factors from circumstance to diet. There's so many factors at play as to be functionally incalculable in practice, but not in theory. If one were to have all information in the universe, one could accurately predict everything. Including quantum physics. Quantum physics is still well within a deterministic universe. The whacky stuff like indeterminacy points more to holes in our understanding of variables than it does these things acting in ways contradictory to how the universe appears to fundamentally work. Even if quantum particles cannot ever be determined, if we are ultimately determined by what undetermined things do, then we are still determined. When you say something like there not being one will but many wills, then what wills the wills? Do those wills have originators? Then what propels the originators of those many wills to will what they will? If nothing was determined, there wouldn't be any solid foundation off of which to build when constructing models for anything from therapies, medication and mathematics. If everything is freely determined probability goes out the window. We know this not to be the case however, so when something fails to work reliably it seems more pertinent to believe that there are hidden or unknown variables at play rather than nothing being determined. The lives of humans and animals are built out of component parts that are themselves determined. So this would be like saying that one can construct a house out of lumber on top of a solid foundation and then surmise that because the "houseness" is an emergent property of its construction, that it can move as if it were a ship of its own accord. That is to say, that if we are constructed of component parts that are themselves determined, how would our lives be any different? We haven't discovered any evidence that we transcend the laws of our parts. My assumption is that the deeper we go into quantum physics and neuroscience, we start to peel back the layers on our ability to believe that we are not determined beings. It seems to me that we are determined beings, but destined to not feel determined because of the incalculably complex nature of the universe with so many parts acting on other parts that our future seems impossible to determine. I don't think we will ever change the schema that we currently operate under: a paradoxical and hypocritical set of beliefs that we are at once free to do as we will but are manipulated by every factor in our lives.
@longcastle4863 I like how you think you can't equate kicking a rock down a hill and neurological rock kicking. Even if each brain is relatively the same, your "aetherial" Self is just a different network of neurons, kicking rocks down incredibly complex physical networks. Just because there is far more complexity doesn't mean it's not
The hypothetical arguments along the lines of ‘if you could replay the scenario, you would still choose them same’ are unfounded empirically since that experiment can never be run.
Well we have some evidence. The laws of physics are universal (as so far as we can see). It’s true that if I shoot two arrows on earth at the same launch point, same force and same angle of launch, they will land the same assuming drag and etc are controlled. The same is true with human beings. It’s chaos theory, however. Humans are so complex and susceptible to certain conditions that even the slightest alteration can result in the greatest differences in end point. Thus if we control for this (rewinding the universe to your birth and pressing play) everything would play out the same assuming all initial start factors are the same as they where last time.
I’d like to distinguish from a truth claim as a pointer and a truth claim as a tool. As a pointer, I would tend toward free will being illusory. As a tool, I would be agnostic, fostering the capability to flip between the two. If it helps me to let go of the pain of a betrayal, it would be more universal to be a determinist. If I want to make some change in my life, I would lean into the assumption that I have some agency in my choices.
In fact you can discover the change of view in regard of human responsabiity in the greek myths. King Oedipus is not guilty because of a moral choice he has made but because of the bad consequences of his deeds. Which means that the focus does not lie in the question of good or bad intention of the acting person, but on the effects of the committed deeds. In German we call this "Erfolgsstrafrecht" instead of moderrn "Schuldstrafrecht" (criminal justice of the effects and criminal justice of responsability (implying free choice).
I guess my question is, if there is no freedom of will, why does Nietzsche bother discussing ideas like the Last Man and Overman, if we cannot choose to be one or the other? Why does he expect there to be some great philosopher of the future, if our historical circumstances proscribe us to remain within predetermined boundaries with no escape? Why does he even use the phrase "will to power" if it is not a product of will, but of fate? Not that I disagree with his points about free will, it just has wider implications for his thoughts. Though, I do find it a little difficult to believe that the structures in which we live preordain everything and there is no escape whatsoever, which is the argument for criminology that sociologists have frequented for decades now. I would be a walking example of that not being the case, a statistical anomaly. Nonetheless, I prefer the term "agency" instead of free will
Your comments about people who are like “oh, the free will debate is so boring,” “will never lead to any objective conclusion” (as with how many other philosophical questions?), etc. I think betray a sort of anxiety people have about the issue. “We mustn’t go down THAT road…” I don’t care to identify as a “hard determinist,” but I think something I would call “intellectual cowardice” (especially when it comes to people like JP) really comes into play with people who just go “well, we’ll never know for sure or whatever, but we should just accept it as real, end of story.” I just see it as one more paradox among countless others. It’s not like, because I can’t take seriously the notion of “free will,” I just laze about all day, moping. Since coming to terms with it, I’ve been a far more happy, patient, and above all, compassionate person. Oddly enough…more motivated as well, though I’m not sure that is causal. I understand that the purpose of this video was not to say “free will is bullshit,” I just felt the need to add this. Even more than religion, I’ve found that people are very touchy and emotional when it comes to free will. I’ve seen even the polite suggestion that it may be an illusion (or, as Sam Harris says it, “an illusion of an illusion”) cause people to become quite agitated. I don’t think that an honest and serious reappraisal of free will needs to be depressing, or to lead to some decadent morass where criminals get carte Blanche to kill or wreak havoc, as many bizarrely seem to assume.
I had developed a similar view on morality and its origins that man's supposed superiority (as you said in the video, divinity) over other beings and non beings also created his suffering. He believed he had divinity in him but that also made him responsible for his actions, which became the source of misery. Why do we seek answers in philosophy? We are deeply wounded by our own conceptions of ourselves and separated the world from the self. We want to heal ourselves, and the only way to do it is to drop our false pretenses and accept our non-divinity, we are all animals and no greater than any given object in this world. And this is not a bad thing. We are not restrained anymore. We are free from the guilt and remorse. If we have reached this point, then we may also try to heal the society as a whole, to help the victims of our 'justice' and show them the light we have seen. I believe this is what man has to do now. He has to redeem whole of his existence, humanity, even the world itself. We will redeem wars, famine and every 'immoral' action man has made. We will heal every suffering person, not out of pity but to release them from their shackles.
Although I had not correlated my views with Nietzsche before, it is obvious that his works have unconsciously made an impact to reach this conclusion by myself. Also it proves what we 'free spirits' (hopefully) should do to heal ourselves.
What is it that Nietzsche in "the geneaology of morality" II part; aphorism 12, is talking about, when he says: what Huxley accused Spencer with - his "administrative nihilism"... but it is about more than about "administering" ? (my own translation into englisch, I hope you get my question)
Even if free will doesn’t exist, this doesnt mean that it is pointless to punish crimes. Someone without total free will could still calculate their behaviors based on a given incentive structure. For example, if they are genetically predisposed to be somewhat risk averse, they may be less likely to commit a crime if the threat of imprisonment is present than they would be to commit a crime if the threat of imprisonment isn’t present. This logic doesn’t suggest an uncaused cause for human will, it suggests that various people are going to behave differently within different incentive structures based on their genetic makeup and their previous experiences with the environment. Basically, the consequence isn’t there to punish people in a moral sense, it is there to disuade people from behaving a certain way.
He definitely is. But notice how he often takes the same word and gives it two meanings. So, with fatalism, there is a passage where he speaks of “Mohammedan fatalism” - where the individual feels himself weak, compelled, resigned to his fate. But in talking about Goethe in Twilight of Idols, Nietzsche offers him as an example of a higher man and praises his “trusting fatalism”. Rather than feeling resigned or held in chains by a deterministic world, the trusting fatalist accepts whatever comes and says “Yes!” to it as an act of a strong will. This is why, as he says, it is really a matter of strong and weak wills. Free will was an illusion: but in terms of one’s attitude, free will can be a strong ideology or a weak ideology; so too can determinism be a strong or a weak ideology. I prefer to think of my outlook as the “trusting fatalism” view: a determinism of strength as it were.
@@untimelyreflections Thanks man, that's what I thought, but I appreciate your validation of it! Who is he reffering to with "la religion de la souffrance humaine" at the end of this Aphorism 21 (beyond good and evil), christianity, buddhism (or Schopenhauer)? Can you tell the exact aphorism he's writing about "Mohammedian fatalism", I thought he's only "shooting against" christianity and buddhism, but I guess in his days you could go against every religion (not as today!)
Reality is different in different states of consciousness. One’s understanding of the world is different in waking vs. dreaming vs. deep sleep. Each state is qualitatively distinct from the other. For example, the sense of doership is totally absent in deep sleep, while in the dream state, the personal identification to any activity is often confused and uncertain. When operating in the waking state, awareness is generally identified and engaged with the sensory body and the perceived world around it. These three states are transitory and relative to each other. Underlying the relative states of consciousness is pure consciousness or Being. Being is an unchanging and ever present field of silence or non-activity. The identification with any of the relative states is a mistake the intellect makes when it overlooks the silent Witness of all phenomenal existence. Free will begs the question who is it that is the true agent of activity. There is no need for an individual doer. That there is a sense of someone doing anything is a made up construct learned early in life; it’s an evolutionary useful adaptation adopted by Homo sapiens. Its utility vanishes once there is the direct realization that Being is the source of all that arises in conscious experience. This is not metaphysics (necessarily), the Witness is ever present. Right now the Witness is present. There is no free will because there’s no doer to exercise it. But so long as the one is ignorant of one’s true nature, the adoption persists.
You can't decide one way or the other on the basis of logic and fact.. so choose the answer .. the one that makes you happy.. you know which one that would be.. that you are free and creative.. and living is fun..
In order to say that there is no such thing as "free will", let alone that society e.g. legitimate jurisprudence abandon the concept, it would be necessary to define the term with some universally applicable comprehensive parameters of closure. Including on the part of such a person as would presume to provide such ultimate definition avoiding the fallacy of arguing from the part to define the entirety. The part being of course any individual's finally isolated subjective experience of deliberate observation and intentionality. With any attempt to do so ultimately doomed to collapse under its own weight, such as in Wittgenstein's characterization of Frege and Russell's stark ideal of achieving some ultimately true closure defining the workings of language. Consider also Gödel's incompleteness theorem. As to which is it not the case that the game, as it were, of 'defining' many words reflecting the ultimately inaccessible experience of others' individual subjectivity has to depend not so much on concise exactitude attempting some manner of precise closure, but the 'game' of accomodating illustration by example, such as in Jesus's parables? As for any person failing to appreciate, let alone attempting to outright deny, the essential necessity of such illustration for effective "free will" use of language and indeed whatever infinitely unfolding nature of the concept of "free will" in itself - might such a person by their very example correspondingly contribute to some observers' better appreciation of the concept of "absurd"? Examples of words self evidently in this aspect having to be considered ultimately rather as flexible concepts, including also by implication of their functionally illustrative interrelation include: conscience, contrition, responsibility, sacrifice, justice . . .
Right, telling someone that they are what is inside them is somehow the “equivalent” of telling someone that they are an external substance outside of themselves. Totally the same thing.
@@untimelyreflections Ah, thank you for that razor-sharp distinction between "internal" and "external" forces, as if the line between the two is as clear as black and white. Let me break it down for you. Whether it’s a passion, an addiction, or a biological drive, these impulses are all part of the same messy package of being human. Just because something comes from “inside” you doesn’t mean it defines you or that it’s even remotely healthy to give it free reign. Take a passion, for example-something you might feel deeply about, something that pushes you forward. That passion is, at its core, just another kind of impulse, like an addiction. It feels good, right? It’s alluring, intoxicating even, like the rush an alcoholic feels with a drink in their hand. But are we really going to say that someone *is* their alcoholism? Of course not, and that’s the point. You don’t become one with your addiction, nor do you become one with your passion, just because they happen to originate inside you. And here’s the kicker: not every impulse deserves validation. Just because something feels natural or deeply ingrained doesn’t mean it’s a good thing to indulge. Let’s consider the example of hunger-something as basic and instinctive as it gets. You feel hungry, so you eat, right? Simple enough. Except what if you’re already overweight? That hunger is leading you astray. So how is that any different from being driven by a passion that might ultimately be destructive? Or take desires that are rooted in something biological, like sexual attraction. You might think, “Well, at least I desire something socially acceptable,” but again, that doesn’t make the desire a part of who you are-it’s just another impulse. You don’t get credit for being lucky enough to desire something conventional, just as you’re not condemned for feeling something less typical. In the end, these impulses-whether we label them passions, desires, or addictions-don’t define us any more than a malfunctioning body part or a disease does. They’re just signals, some worth heeding, others not. So, no, you are not your passions, just as you are not your hunger, thirst, or asthma. These things are part of your experience, but they don’t get to claim ownership of your identity unless you let them.
In order for free will to exist it only has to exist infinitesimally. In order for the absence of free will to exist it must exist absolutely. Given that this is the case I'll roll the dice on free will.
I think you have taken what Hitchens said in a debate he had on his book tour (God Is Not Great, Why Religion Poisons Everything") with a preacher. Hitchen's point was more along the lines (I paraphrase) "Of course I have free will. God (according to a the Bible) gave it to me. Thereforre, I don't have any choice in the matter."
Nietzsche attributes logical errors to the laziness or imprecision of language. Fine, I use religious paradigms to talk to people, even though they aren't perfect. And sometimes a truth is uttered unintentionally
Only a few minutes in but the belief in free will seems to be an extension of the human obsession with itself, our over confidence in our “errors” being universal. It seems that no matter what you think you are observing it AFTER it is already thought, meaning that at the very least your consciousness is not choosing. In short, the only place free will could reside would be prior to consciousness (because how could you observe your thoughts prior to thinking them?) but even then it seems like special pleading to assume that is free when every other object of the universe at that scale works through clear cause and effect. The conception of a free will at some point being an uncaused cause does not sit well with me. Would this still not make the free will basically irrational and random? If it without cause, it cannot make choices based on anything, it is by definition going to be random or arbitrary which way it swings. I just don’t see any step in the process of action that would permit a free will in the weird intuition of the whole. If any free will libertarians are reading this, could you please let me know how a system of free will would work explicitly and in detail? How would a will make non-random choices without relying completely on causes such as mood, memories, biological pathways, or reason? I think it’s in the Gay Science where Nietzsche has a passage about free will that I hope you touch on, about people observing that they think a thought and then it is acted out, and immediately assume it was them, despite being completely unaware of all of the processes involved. Anyways, excited to hear your analysis!
What i understand of it the queston of freedom comes down to wether we are aware of the driving forces motives etc or not.if we are aware and understand these motives ,meaning that we have made them our own trrough understanding.if not aware the we are not free because we are compeled by external forces.when fully aware trough understanding i cant say i am compeled by anything other then my self so i m acting out of my own freedom.this does not mean that all my actions are free since i am not aware of all motives that compel me but to say i am never fully aware or could become aware of all motives drives etc for a particular act i think is not correct.
Yeah, Hitchens seems to have been an intuitionist about free will and morality. He may have been influenced by G E Moore: our direct and irresistible experiences of free will and morality more firmly justifies them than any abstract, philosophical criticisms could possibly undermine them.
I was expecting something about 'free will' , what is it? where does it work? what does it do? Tell me, how often do you decide to make a bad choice? if you never decide to make a bad choice, how then can any choice be called good? you only choose.
@@WSdogz An ambition has direction to an objective, or you could say the ambition defines the objective. 'Will" is the propelling force of an ambition. when you choose, will is implied. 'Man' refers to objective born in the imagination. The 'free will' applies to ambition that does not arise from the body but from the imagination.
Even today it's kind of unclear how non-philosophers and different cultures think about morality and free will. Moral realists will often claim that the belief in stance independent moral facts is just the common sense view, but the empirical research on this is just starting and it doesn't yet support that claim.
I just look at it as to get to a destination (fate) you can take a bus, plane, walk, drive, etc and so on (free will) but to be very realistic every person's true fate is death eventually. Just to simplify. We can be a hero or a villain, a teacher or a dunce. Reap what you sow. Some food crops grow every year, some grow fast and ruin the soil. All are food. 🤔
I find it odd that a thinker who held discourse on the will to power discounts the possibility that we humans are origins of our actions. That we can intend. That we can remember. That we can model future effects growing out of possible choices. Why do thinkers, not just Nietzsche, immediately jump into discussions of morality when discussing free will? To me, free will is a natural assumption we have because we freely plan and act. It's where our technology comes from. It's our power, out "all too human" power. Unless Nietzsche linked his discussion here about free will with there about the will to power effectively, I'll have to judge Nietzsche as failing to get at the heart of what he was grappling with.
I’m re-watching all the episodes after seeing the recent livestream. You really had a problem with Peterson haha. Peterson is not looking at things as a philosopher, but as a physician. and he looks at the society as he would at one of his clients. You can discuss ideas abstractly at a philosophy seminar but then comes life and you got to be practical. I remember watching Chomsky say „moral relativism is like sceptism. nobody really lives like that. they wouldn’t survive 5 minutes.” Peterson probably realises what influence he has gotten and wants to do spread a more practical message. I’m not defending him, but I felt like writing this after you namedropped him in 5 episodes in a row 😂
is so sad that people that study academia without being part of it still think a political scammer like peterson deserves any attention it has come to a point that whatever works link to him it gets automatically rejected by my team, so sad that bright minds get scammed when there's so many philosophers that said anything misinterpreted for him far better and far long ago.
Yes. Jordan Peterson is a total bullshit artist and will be forgotten in the dust bin of history is less time than it took him to get his last perm from his hair dresser. Just another Rush Limbaugh.
Personally do not believe in free will. But I believe the study of evolutionary psychology can show a reason why people still should be held responsible for their actions. That reason is that we need to exist as a group to survive. And if the actions of an individual threaten that group then that individual has to be punished and taken out of society for the greater good of the whole. It all comes down to evolutionary programming and survival.
Meh Peterson... You don't need that as a foundation, justice is corrective you fix the deterministic mechanism. You have either chaos or determinism, isn't it? You can have some chaotic determinism, like the double pendulum, unknowable completely as chaos will accumulate and grow by deterministic means, so you can predict them short term I guess.
@@untimelyreflections So you do understand the cause? Brilliant, then you can be the first of these philosophers to demonstrate that free will doesn't exist in the real world through empirical methods. Go ahead.
Here's my issue with the discussion of whether we should punish people who do harm to others: If there is no free will, then there is no real choice of whether "we" would punish people who do harm to others. And so, even if some are destined to explore the idea that people who are compelled by destiny to do harm to others, and so they should not be punished from a position of revenge.... that point of view is pointless because others are compelled by destiny to do what they think they are "choosing" to do, which may include punishing harm-doers out of a position of revenge. So this discussion seems pointless, even though I might be destined to find it so. Also, regarding the lynching of an elephant bit.... Causing the elephant to suffer seems cruel. However, if it seems likely the elephant would kill again, whether by it's free will or pre-determination, it would be idiotic to let the elephant live in circumstances where it could kill again. So, however unfortunate the circumstances an elephant endured to become a killer, or however a human becomes a killer, killing an elephant, or killing or jailing humans seems the most practical approach to deal with serious wrong-doers. To to otherwise seems unworkable and impractical. To say "Oh, this person has killed people on several occasions, but since he was pre-disposed to do so, we will let this person kill more people, as he/she is likely to do." That seems an idiotic position, or at best, Californian.
If you have no free will you have no freedom. That's the number one thing that create deception because people believe in something just because someone else said that without proving it themselves that works for them or not. Let no man teach you!!! You have to be able to get the knowledge and put it to test until you yourself prove that's actually true otherwise you can be deceived. So free will is very very important, that's freedom of choice and knowledge and that's what create the person that we are otherwise we will be living the live or the "truth" of other people which can end up creating suffering in our lives.
There's ways in which I can agree with this, and ways in which I can't. For example Nietzsche's idea of criminal justice seems like a good idea for some people, such as pedophiles. If it is true you were born this way then we have to change who you are through means such as chemical castration and even a death sentence in extreme circumstances Eugenics is also back on the table as if things such as depression, anxiety, bipolar disorder, etc etc are shown to be genetic then the moral thing to do is preventing them from breeding Generally though I believe in a more moderate form of free will. Your conscious mind is your free will and you are in control of that, but your subconscious mind is your Fate and you are not in control of that
Those disorders are manageable with a good environment, support network, and medication without too much issue. People with serious genetic disorders such as Huntington's disease and Tay-Sachs shouldn't breed.
"Only a few minutes in" No, please, listen to the whole episode before commenting. Listen through, listen attentively. A lot of garbage is put out regarding this topic and Essentialsalts did a wonderful job of not dumbing it down, neither simply falling for the same clichés and reductive objections.
The intro seemed pretty naïve. Just because some people debate it doesn't mean it's not getting anywhere. A more rational way to look at it is that the claim of free will is completely unsubstantiated, and as extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, free will must be seen as nothing but a social convention. Of course people are arguing it, just as people argue that the earth is flat.
So what is the mechanism for choice. In the supermarket i am in the cerial isle and there are over fifty choices of which perhaps six or seven are in the running. So already i am constrained. I could have gone down the healthfood section in its own area. I could have visitedother stores. I couldhave gone on Amazon but i didnt. The thought never arose. How much time are you dedicating to this choice? And at what point do i stop the decision making process? Of Course it is said that God gave us free will as though thks was not the default position. Trees dont have free will or birds or sheep. But them there is Hell! The biggest constraint on free will there is, guaranteed to keep the faithful in line. If you think you are in control try not to think for even one minute. And do you chooke what thought will come next. Try hard not to think about the ocean. Once the idea is mentioned that is where your mind goes .
You have will, but it is not free. Your decisions are your own, but you could not have done otherwise. Agents do not exist in truth. You are part of the universe, and your actions are not more free than the movement of atoms, as in, totally determined by the starting conditions of the system.
Is the presented aware of Nietzsche’s deathbed biography, My Sister and I, published by Samuel Roth in 1952? If this is accepted as genuine then it goes a long way to explain his hammering away at the foundations of morality. The Genealogy of Morals makes his antagonism with the subject very evident. He ultimately comes to insist on amor fati. His realization that fate, by which is meant one’s peculiar and unavoidable human condition, must not just be accepted passively but embraced willfully. Thus I am; I am not just a mistake of my creator or a victim of fate for thus I will to be. Or to speak religiously, thus my God, who is beyond good and evil, has made me to be.
@@carlharmeling512 no, not a word, nor heard of it before. My judgment was entirely based on the factors I mentioned: author and date. By doing some *very* light research right now, I am only more assured. "My Sister and I is an apocryphal work attributed to the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. Following the Nietzsche scholar Walter Kaufmann, most consider the work to be a literary forgery." _"My Sister and I"_ makes several bold and otherwise unreported biographical claims, most notably of an incestuous relationship between Nietzsche and his sister Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche, as well as an affair with Richard Wagner's wife Cosima. It is written in a style that combines anecdote and aphorism in a manner similar to other Nietzsche works. (via Wikipedia) Considering this, and that the author Samuel Roth is the same of _Roth v. United States_ (1957) in which he pushed for the mainstreaming of degeneracy, it seems to be yet another perverse and spiteful Jew taking aim to smear a man who spoke critically about Jews, after he was dead and unable to defense himself.
@@Laotzu.Goldbug Samuel Roth had very high regard for Nietzsche and was sharply critical of Jewish behavior towards non Jews. Before you listen to that dope Kaufman, who had his own reasons for calling the book a forgery, try reading it and if you know Nietzsche as well as I do you’ll be pleasantly surprised by what you read.
Podcasts are irrelevant if there's no free will? That doesn't follow. It's just me giving you information. Even if it is determined whether or not that information affects the outcome of your life... that doesn't mean that the information can't affect the outcome of your life. Sorry but this kind of objection is just tired.
From the philosophy of freedom by rudolf steiner.paraphrazing.....the act of cognition......by percieving anything outward or inward before aplying thinking i just percieve percepts.......i use thinking to bring fitting concepts to these precepts....if the concepts fit i expirience understanding........i dont have to apply my thinking to the percepts...i can just stare and be aware of them....if i want to understand them i have to use thinking.....nothing in the given (percepts) compels me to do this i freely choose to do so.
I can't help but disagree with Nietzsche's (or your interpretation of Nietzsche's) opinion on justice. For one, justice as retribution for wrongs is almost as directly an expression of noble morality that I can imagine - you are repaying tit for tat; not taking a blow and turning the other cheek but returning a blow in kind. For two, and on purely self-serving grounds, I'm not liable to accept the notion that society or an individual should be armed with the moral hammer to start calling people it disagrees with as 'sickly' and in need of 'rehabilitation' - I mean, seriously, how many dystopian novels does that conjure up the image of? '1984', 'Brave New World', even 'One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest'. Do you really mean to suggest that a 'hothouse of the strong like Venice or Rome' functioned as such by treating political opponents as clay invalids rather than granite competition? It certainly does not conjure up the image of nobility - of knights jousting or Perseus slaying Medusa (I mean, really, Medusa just needed some Benzedrine, Perseus was really out of line!). Lastly, using the phrase, "become who you are" as a base for some linguistic algebra, I believe Nietzsche's "position" on free will is reducible to a determinist/essentialist position: "Your becoming is your becoming" Simply a restatement of two terms "Who you are is who you are" Simply a restatement of two terms "Become who you are" Nietzsche's formulation "You become who you are" If untrue, then 'You don't become who you are'; this also means that it's possible to 'not be who you are' or 'Who you are is not who you are' which appears to be a logical contradiction. If you are not 'who you are' then, 'who are you'? In my mind, if there is a distinction between a person and their becoming, it is tantamount to denying Nietzsche's psychological observations about human beings, that they are one with their effects. "You are who you are" By substituting the term "You become" with "You are" which were demonstrated to be coterminous you arrive at an essentialist statement about human beings, but you've also stated earlier that people are one with their becoming and cannot help becoming who they are, ergo they lack free will and determined by 'who they are'.
@@Wingedmagician the criticism was toward you. Imagine discussing great film directors and you mix in a TH-camr with Kubrick and Kurosawa. It was me rejecting political carpetbaggers and finding a different channel to look for freedom from that troll.
This idea of causeless will, where "causeless" equates to "free" in a world ruled by causality is pure nonsense. How does this irrational idea of freedom from cause have anything to do with human freedom anyway? Free will is the antithesis of the irrationality of causeless will, as it represents decisions made by way of our power of reason - rationally thoughtful determination. So how appropriate it is that a determined world is a prerequisite for the existence of free will.
Gosh-- I can't help but feel disgust with this view of free Will. Now you can see how this type of thinking leads to terrible things. We need to understand that our thoughts will dictate our behavior. For instance, if you believe(think) women should be clothed from top to bottom then that will manifest in reality. Like wise, if you believe(think) women can expose themselves fully then that will manifest in reality. So what I'm saying what you think becomes reality...so think wisely! It's not a matter of whether we have free will or not its how we want to live in reality that matters.
You “can’t help” but feel disgust? So you didn’t freely choose how you felt about it? Nothing in the video says “we can’t make judgments about human behavior or morals”. You failed to understand the content, and defaulted to disgust. Do you think this is the operation of a thinking mind, or the impulse of your moral prejudices?
@@untimelyreflections umm no. I'm pointing out that thoughts are reality. So how do you want to live I ask? After all how we live is what matters...right?
@@PinoSantilli-hp5qq "thoughts are reality"? How is this a meaningful statement beyond the trivial obervation that thoughts exist? I don't see what the questions you pose have to do with free will.
What if you make decisions by coin-toss? What if it rains unexpectedly on a day there is only a 10% chance of rain. What is a distracted driver crosses a boundary and hits your car?
At my age, 52, one tends to just skip whatever repetition of the same narratives and topics already fleshed out by countless podcasters and critics, but Essentialsalts, however lengthy, could keep me listening to the very end of video.
Thanks for posting!
Me too and I listen over and over, a big part of it is his soothing voice...
@@virtue_signal_😂😂😂. It's been my 'policy' to not want a reveal of the bearer of the voice because like a name, when you hears it, one creates an image of the bearer. When one gets to see the bearer, the eyes contradict the image and in most cases I have found this is always lower than the image. But whatever case it is for Essentials he has the voice and a way of opening the topic to a new level. He makes Nietszche available to common fella while introducing a new way of looking mistakes made in the past that call for a present demand for psychological mutation thru insight and immediate change. I am first drawn by his voice but I am now a student of N thru E.
@@winniethuo9736 I think he's pretty.
@@virtue_signal_ 👌
I had read Nietzsche on this topic quite a long time ago, and as I grew older and I understood more and more on life and how fragile we are against suggestion and effects caused by external sources which trigger reactions and response in us, I could never believe anything remotely close to a "free" will, what I'm concerned with as of now is more in line of "can one achieve a freer will by understanding his drives and emotions and things which trigger a response within him"
The unexamined life is not worth living?
@@christopherellis2663 for me it wouldn't be I guess.....I can't tell others what to do, but I will silently judge them 😅
@christopherellis2663 the only person living like that has a vegetable for a brain
Our senses are like open wounds, and the controllers at the helm of information sources are eager to program us with the worst and most destructive kinds of suggestions imaginable
I've just listened to this again, and feel I understand Nietzsche's position better now. I have long understood the importance of the question, but found inconsistencies in the views of most philosophers, including Schopenhauer, although he's usually very rational. We'll done for pointing out the weaknesses of the arguments of Hitchens and Peterson, too. Both brilliant in their own ways, but neither is a philosopher! I'm also starting to see how much Jung owed to Nietzsche - in fact, the essence of his life work. All this is immensely valuable, and at the risk of sounding hyperbolic, I'll say it again: these podcasts are actually life-changing. Thank you once again.
For some reason this part of Nietzsche's philosophy is greatly overlooked. It might be because people like to think of Nietzsche as an existentialist and people that tend to associate themselves with that movement tend to dislike fatalistic views. Anyhow I appreciate this video.
We might have missed it because of our own personal biases.
It might be that most people can’t help but to overlook it, that they couldn’t do otherwise.
@@CrazyLinguiniLegs and if we did it again we'd do it exactly the same way.
@@virtue_signal_My question is simple. Should a person be judge based on his ability to reason?
@@SbsvwvwvEbebebeb Yes, and no. The reason reason is effective for changing minds and educating people and helping them think about problems and problem solving more wisely is because there is no free will. So, if someone pays attention, and learns quickly, we'd want to reward that fact about them. Operant conditioning works because there is no free will. It's influence that the awarded did not choose,and now they'll want to repeat their victories. That conditioning works on some, and just creates jealousy in others. Jealousy displays and anger at success should be punished and marginalized, because that too is more conditioning that the jealous receiver didn't choose or produce themselves. We demonstrate value for that jealous person by punishing their display of jealousy, their immature and selfish view of success.
Dude this video is incredible. We’re chewing on some unbelievably dense and meaningful topics here. Thank you so much for posting this. The implications are astounding
Love these videos! Keep up the good work my guy!
Nietzsche correctly identified a person as a collection of drives.
But I am more than simply the sum of my drives. I am also the thing that is aware of those drives, as well as the conflicts and contradictions that exist between them.
I attempt as best I can to reconcile and resolve these conflicts and contradictions, and by this process, I grow into the person I strive to become. To me, this struggle constitutes the "meaning" of my life. It's the reason that my life matters.
My drives are what I interact with, not what I am. What I am is *that which chooses* what I am.
Nietzsche wished to remove morality from our mental universe. But without moral reasoning, how do we navigate this process of self determination? On what basis do we choose who we are?
I suspect Nietzsche's answer is something along the lines of: "replace ethics with aesthetics". Live your life as a work of art, he might say.
I admit, this prospect has a certain appeal to me. The sublime chaos of creation is undeniably sacred, and must be honored.
But I do not think the flame of creation is sufficient on its own. Our quest also requires a map. If we don't have one, we must make one. This is a necessary part of the journey, in my opinion.
But if we abandon cartography entirely (which is what ~I think~ Nietzsche is saying), then the entire project of becoming human is rendered impossible and pointless.
And once again, we're back to that old cliche, nihilism. It's probably the least creative accusation you could hurl at Nietzsche, but it's popularity is not an accident. It's the core issue on which his ideas succeed or fail, I think.
If Nietzsche has a real solution to the problem of nihilism, then the project he's proposing becomes incredibly compelling.
I'm still undecided as to whether he has such a solution.
If I ever figure it out, I'm sure it will be as a result of listening to the content on this channel. I'm certain that there's no better source of Nietzschean scholarship available anywhere outside of a graduate seminar than this channel is providing.
It's a true gift to the world that this knowledge is freely available, and I thank you very much for your generosity.
Amazing thanks for sharing
You now need to say what you are not, and find consistency.
It is not possible to be fully aware of those drives all the time, like digestion for example, it is automatic, so awareness might be an invention to explain the unknown, like the invention of gods etc.
Nietszche’s tablets will be broken, his master and slave morality philosophy suffers from his misunderstanding of classes or what were more like castes before the 1700s. To put it shortly, his ubermensches die off and the weak willed inherit the earth and proliferate slave morality in churches and only allow a certain class into the free mason lodges to learn stoicism and master morality… nietzsche himself suffers from this false consciousness, one of the true suspicions of the masters of suspicion that Marx understood. It’s funny because nietzsche thought Marx was weak willed for wanting everyone to be the same class despite the fact that If everyone was given same chance there would be far more ubermensches and napoleons instead of just one every 1000 years.
I think the problem with the idea that you can replace morality with aesthetics is very similar to the mistake libertarians make when they. Think they can replace the state with private institutions.
The nature of something is not what you call it, but what it does. e.g. If you take policing, infrastructure, administration and tax collecting from a national government and give it over to corporations, those corporations simply become the government and over time will be entirely indistinguishable from what existed a century or two before even if they still call themselves Cash Money Inc.
At a very root level aesthetic judgments and moral judgments proceed from the same exact kernel of the soul, which is not based on reason but on instinct, impulse and a kind of transcendent preference. over time we have a tendency to systematize these and sometimes impose them on other people. So in other words, if you try to navigate the world with aesthetic judgments versus moral ones given time you will eventually end up in the same exact position where you are turning that judgment against yourself, where you are struggling with contradictions, and where you have internal agony.
The conflict or obstacle that Nietzsche is trying to remove from the World by removing morality from the world cannot be removed because it is not a feature of morality, it is a feature of Being Human and being alive. morality is simply the main way it is expressed, but it would be expressed in a different way if that was not an option.
I agree that a "map" is necessary. As Camus said, if love is enough, life would be too easy; Likewise, if it were enough to be your own creative God, it would be very easy, any animal could be it. I think that Nietzsche in Zarathustra does also propose to make a map, but one based on your own perceptions and drives. I believe that this should include learning from other sources (whether Nietzsche believed it or not), wholism is necessary. As Bruce Lee said, learn from everything and take what works. But we must balance it by avoiding being a jack of all trades and a master of none, that's where you have to be a nietzschean.
I think Peterson's point is less about the idea that the intuition of free will is "good" because it is true in the face of some REAL fact or order how the universe works, and more about how it is the foundation for a morality that he finds to be healthy from a psychological standpoint. The technicality that this morality may be based on a lie does not matter so much for Peterson if that “lie” is juxtaposed to a truth that is a part of independent reality ( capital R REAL). Peterson and those he is influenced by put heavy emphasis on developmental stages of consciousness, this means that morality and belief would operate like traits did for Darwin - the bad ones dying out and the ones that aided in survival remaining in the phylogeny as culture develops. There is a sort of moral and cultural “survival of the fittest” that plays out for thinkers like Peterson. All he is saying is that modern human beings possess something like a “cultural phenotype” or disposition to trust the intuition that our choices are free and it has led to positive consequences from a developmental point of view. Peterson views western society as something like a quasi-successful organism that has evolved the right cultural traits to survive the world, and find meaning in it - free will is a fundamental element of this evolved organism.
With this in mind, being wary of "getting rid of it" when it comes to free will is paramount. If human society for the past 50,000+ years has been trying their hand and believing certain things, the intuition for free will emerged as random as something like a "trait" does for Darwin. Those who had a proclivity to think this way and act on it are clearly the successful ones because we all think like this even though there is no good or "natural" reason to. So taking for granted the way we think and morality we have as something invented rather than developed and doing away with it is all Peterson is warning against in regards to free will.
Furthermore I do not think Nietzsche's treatment of FW in Human all too Human 39 is a "takedown" in any form of Peterson's position, as laid out above. Nietzsche's understanding, to me, seems to be in a similar vein. Culture and the individual developed and are subject to that process, there are careful orders in place and it is no small or safe task to unchain yourself from them.
Great video man, love the podcast.
>"Peterson and those he is influenced by put heavy emphasis on developmental stages of consciousness, this means that morality and belief would operate like traits did for Darwin - the bad ones dying out and the ones that aided in survival remaining in the phylogeny as culture develops."
This is a great point and one I don't give Peterson credit for often enough, so thanks for raising it. That being said, I think Peterson himself would agree that beliefs and psychological tendencies can survive over long generations while nevertheless being harmful or dangerous - or, at least, harmful or dangerous when allowed to run amok, unchecked by reason. We might consider the impulse towards making decisions based on compassion, or to creating equality. Peterson himself recognizes that these are tendencies which exist for an evolutionary reason but when maximized become harmful. Or, let's take another example: authoritarianism. Peterson seems convinced that human structures of governance are more fragile than we believe, having to be constantly balanced on the edge of order and chaos, and that they can fall into anarchy or tyranny relatively quickly. He believes that the psychology of mass movements presents a recurring threat of authoritarianism and utopian thinking, that has to be actively counterbalanced with logic and argument or else we will get swept up in it again. Sure, tyrannies never last, in Peterson's view, but we're never safe from the psychological forces that allow for them to take hold.
Why have I belabored this point, unrelated to free will? Well, because I would agree with Peterson that we can find recurring tendencies in thought which serve some function now as well as in their origin, but which still saddle mankind with potentially pathological behavior if we don't examine in them in the light of reason.
I assert that this is what Nietzsche is doing with free will. He's arguing that, for one: we didn't believe in the libertarian viewpoint on free will in all ages, that is an innovation of Christianity, a relatively new religion (and you don't really see this view at all in the East, such as in classical China). Sure, there have been variations on the idea going back to the time of the Greeks, but I would hold that then, as now, most people do not fully comprehend the claim being made if we accept the position of libertarian free will. Given that it seems to be so strong a tendency in modernity to create this conception of the self as an uncaused cause, perhaps by demonstrating how the concept is largely incoherent (which I feel N. demonstrates), reason will dispel our mistaken thinking.
Nietzsche would also argue, in fact, that the free will delusion is responsible for many of the ressentiment-based authoritarian movements that Peterson says we must apply reason to guard against: that seeking revenge isn't possible without free will.
>"Furthermore I do not think Nietzsche's treatment of FW in Human all too Human 39 is a "takedown" in any form of Peterson's position, as laid out above. Nietzsche's understanding, to me, seems to be in a similar vein. Culture and the individual developed and are subject to that process, there are careful orders in place and it is no small or safe task to unchain yourself from them. "
I think Nietzsche contradicts Peterson's view on a fundamental level. Peterson thinks that we should check our conclusions against what our moral intuition (conscience) tells us. Nietzsche is saying that what our moral intuitions tell us is not an eternal truth, but one relative to our perspective, and one which can be changed - and therefore that checking our conclusions against our conscience is not a trustworthy process. He would certainly agree that a trait shaped over tens of thousands of years is very strong, but I would challenge the supposition that free will has been a part of human culture for that long. All things considered, it's a relatively new idea. It's part of the West's Christian baggage: and Peterson would agree with Nietzsche that the West, in spite of being a successful civilization, carries a great deal of guilt with it today, which is expressed in the language and actions of the wokeists. While he will probably never recognize that this wokeist guilt is Christian in nature, but I think it is clear that a culture could be successful while still carrying harmful phenotypes. Caution is always prudent - but I don't believe the free will complex is anywhere near as integral or essential than is suggested here.
Thank you very much for the thoughtful criticism. And thanks for listening!
@@untimelyreflections Thanks for the very thought out and enlightening reply! There is a lot to unpack here and I really want to explore some of the ideas that you nodded me towards.
There is no doubt that harmful phenotypes exist in the cultural human genome, but I think there is good reason to argue for the importance of free-will as one of the good ones. I suppose a lot of my thought is influenced by thinkers like Jung, Erich Neumann, eventually Peterson, and only slightly augmented with Nietzsche which can make my analysis of his works rather picky and biased at times. I take what I can get from Nietzsche and from the comfort of my Jung, Neumann, and others I am scared to really peek into some bold claims he makes about our position as moral agents.
I guess I see the picture of the old stories of the bible and ancient mythology as depicting human beings emerging from something like a circular way of life in which they are ruled by instinct and determinism. Consciousness (whatever you take that to be, fundamentally the self awareness of one's thought and action with an attached conception of self) made us aware of what we were doing but this does not mean we yet believed it to be attached to anything like choice. Nietzsche in Human, All too Human allows me to clearly meditate on the idea that our emergence from this determinism, or “moment in the garden” came not when we became free due to our evolving consciousness, but when we believed ourselves to be so. The phenomenological state of the world for conscious human beings before this belief was one characterized by a paradoxical state of paradisal dissatisfaction. We were unable to suffer morally because we did not believe it was at all possible to “make mistakes.” However, with no mistakes comes no satisfaction of being right or correct. It turns out, from literature on neurology, that our nervous system and cognitive setup really values being “correct” or aligned with the world in a certain way that is accurate. (**This point is highly underdeveloped here and possibly confusing, but it is from Peterson and the cognitive science that I am into). In order to be something higher, we told ourselves we were free.
It really may not matter, for me and my philosophical position, whether we are TRULY free or not. It seems that what matters is that belief of freedom as a tool for progression and additive cognitive machinery that changes the way the world appears to us. As the cognitive scientists put it - the world changes with each form or thought or belief, our belief that we are free is making a certain way of acting in the world possible. I believe this way of acting in the world is outlined far earlier than just western Christianity (which I will grant does give a high degree of attention to incompatible free will), but as far back as ancient stories and myth.
Peterson has arrested development and he is bats*it insane and creepy!!
@@IvhehThank you for initiating this train of thought. I have only one question with regards to how we're thinking of the difference between "rational" and "intuitive" thinking, particularly in the light of Iain McGillchrists work on the way our brains perceive reality from two distinct perspectives. And my question is "are we attributing enough credit for the intuitive side given that McGillchrist has made the bold claim that our rational side is far more prone to delusion than our intuitive side?"
I get that it's our intuitive side that initiates the rational side to create narratives that might be an example of the delusions Iain might be pointing at but that opens up an entirely different way of thinking about what is causing the disconnect between people discussing these things.
An example of this might be in the problem of people with powerful intellects like many posting above assuming that using that intellect as a measure to determine who might have influence in a culture when its not obvious to me that intellect nor "rationalising" is the metric to flourish from a Darwinian perspective.
@@untimelyreflections Peterson attempting to explain Nietzche is like attempting to understand an auctioneer speaking in a foresight language. The man is a total bullshit artist all the way down to his hair dresser's latest perm.
“Some think this view absolves you of your responsibility for your acts. But actually you’re responsible for much more than your acts. That which is said to constrain or determine you biologically is actually what you are. It does restrain your acts according to its inherent ways of desiring and acting, but you are this it, and it decided to be, so actually you are responsible for much more, you’re responsible for what you are. You are responsible for the good and bad things that happen to you, for any accident or disease you might experience! Actually it was all going to happen to you just the way it did at the moment of your birth or conception and even before, at the moment your parents had a glint for each other in the eye. There is fundamentally no difference between you and that glint.”BAM
The free will question has basically plagued me since i was introduced to it in a class 10 years ago. I read Alan Watts early on and saw that this sense of separateness is an illusion. I’m also very influenced by Aleister Crowleys concept of True Will, where he likens us to stars with a certain orbit. It’s basically the “become what you are” we see here. One can make sacred the task of simply expressing what one is day to day, which culminates in the life as a whole. Still, the cultural bias of free will is so hard to break from and i often wonder if it’s even possible to truly integrate the idea of fatalism. We will always be treated as if we have this separate moral agency with every move we make. Some of course more than others who may have some kind of mental illness or whatever. But for the most part, i think most people in the West simply live in a world of free will and responsibility, and even though i’ve believed in fatalism for years, i still feel i have to keep reminding myself.
Our philosophy is tailor made to support people like Nietzsche and trash people like us.
What is the cover artwork? Amazing
Much appreciated back story and connexion.
Where can I find the quote "the wise punishes not because men have done wrong in the past, but so that men will not do wrong in the future"? You say it's in the same passage you mentioned before (which would be Aphorism 102), but I can't find it.
You say it at 1:15:00
Human All Too Human Book I, 105.
Recompensing Justice.-Whoever has completely comprehended the doctrine of absolute irresponsibility can no longer include the so-called punishing and recompensing justice in the idea of justice, should this consist of giving to each man his due. For he who is punished does not deserve the punishment, he is only used as a means of henceforth warning away from certain actions; equally so, he who is rewarded does not merit this reward, he could not act otherwise than he did. Therefore the reward is meant only as an encouragement to him and others, to provide a motive for subsequent actions; words of praise are flung to the runners on the course, not to the one who has reached the goal. Neither punishment nor reward is anything that comes to one as one's own; they are given from motives of usefulness, without one having a right to claim them. Hence we must say, "The wise man gives no reward because the deed has been well done," just as we have said, "The wise man does not punish because evil has been committed, but in order that evil shall not be committed." If punishment and reward no longer existed, then the strongest motives which deter men from certain actions and impel them to certain other actions, would also no longer exist; the needs of mankind require their continuance; and inasmuch as punishment and reward, blame and praise, work most sensibly on vanity, the same need requires the continuance of vanity.
Revenge presents itself too me many times when considering Nietzsche's philosophy. I'm glad you brought it up in the context of his Determinism.
What book(s) of Michael Puett do I need to read for the information on confuzianism you mention at 0:22 ?
Thanks as always for your great work!
Check our this lecture for the info you’re looking for: th-cam.com/video/MfnSTr6-1g4/w-d-xo.html
@@untimelyreflections What do you think of this video, would be fascinating to hear your approach on it, if Nietzsche could have been a gnostic.
th-cam.com/video/qKMh1swCBNE/w-d-xo.html
Thank you for sharing your thoughts, this is well done. Subscribed
Fantastic stuff thank you sir.
I like your work
Will admit upfront I’m slow, but did not fully catch how Nietzsche differed from hard determinists (I’ll re-listen to this video). Would like to know how Nietzsche’s view of free will fits or doesn’t with the view of a hard determinist like Robert Sapolsky (don’t want to put words in his mouth, but seems to be his position per his videos). Really liked your video, will look for more.
the last 30 minutes reminded me of two passages in zarathustra that seem super relevant to the will and freedom and revenge and punishment. in the hollingdale translation from penguin, the two sections are called the spirit of gravity and of redemption
It’s not Hutchinson’s, it was first Isaac Bashevis Singer, who said: we have to believe we have free will, we have no choice.
We see people displaying free will all the time like for instance this man's channel is his free will what he talks about.
Nietzsche’s Critique of Free Will EXPLAINED: Why Nietzsche exchanged “moral responsibility” for Fate
00:01 🤔 The topic of free will is often met with apathy and indifference, as people tend to hold positions that align with their preconceptions and intuitions.
01:57 🤨 The argument that we have free will is often based on intuition and personal experience, which may not necessarily be supported by evidence.
03:19 🧐 The debate over free will often centers around the idea that individuals have the experience of making choices, but whether those choices are truly free remains a point of contention.
07:34 🔄 Compatibilists argue that free will and determinism can coexist, suggesting that preserving the concept of free will has societal benefits.
10:54 🕊 Nietzsche challenges the conventional belief in free will and moral responsibility, suggesting that it is a result of fear of the consequences of abandoning this belief.
17:01 🔄 In prehistoric times, moral judgments were based on the consequences of actions rather than attributing moral responsibility to individuals' intentions, as we do today.
19:53 🧠 Nietzsche approached the issue of free will from an anthropological and psychological perspective, examining how human conceptions of themselves and their actions have changed over time.
20:23 🤔 Nietzsche hypothesized that the shift in human views of moral responsibility and free will was influenced by changes in self-conception, particularly the transition from viewing humans as a confluence of internal forces to a solitary soul governing the body.
21:21 🇨🇳 In ancient China and Nietzsche's view, the human being was seen as a product of various natural forces and elements, similar to Nietzsche's perspective, which challenges the notion of a single, autonomous self.
22:19 🤷♂ Nietzsche criticizes the modern view that assigns moral value to intentions, suggesting that it is an error based on language and that actions should be judged by their consequences.
23:18 🔀 Nietzsche describes a historical shift from valuing actions based on their consequences to valuing actions based on their origin in intention, a change influenced by aristocratic values and faith.
24:52 🧐 Nietzsche distinguishes between two stages: the premoral stage where actions were judged by consequences, and the moral stage where actions were judged by intention, emphasizing the shift from external consequences to internal intentions.
27:18 💡 Nietzsche attributes the belief in free will and moral responsibility to the upper classes and their experiences of making decisions and giving commands, which influenced the idea of an independent will governing actions.
28:40 🙇♂ Nietzsche suggests that viewing oneself as a rational ego governing the body is an error, and he leaves room for a virtue ethics approach to morality based on understanding actions as an outflowing of one's nature.
30:03 🧘 Nietzsche views the true self as a multiplicity of often competing drives, and actions result from unconscious urges, with conscious intentions serving as post-hoc narrations.
35:00 🤯 Nietzsche argues that ultimately, individuals cannot be held responsible for their nature, motives, actions, or the effects of their actions, challenging the concept of moral responsibility.
36:32 🌟 Nietzsche envisions a potential extramoral phase where actions' value lies in the unintentional aspect, suggesting a move beyond conventional moral judgments based on intentions.
39:21 🐷 Nietzsche illustrates the idea that humans might one day view individuals as amoral entities, similar to how we perceive animals today, without assigning moral responsibility for their actions.
40:49 🤔 Nietzsche's rejection of free will is a core element of his philosophy.
41:14 🧠 Nietzsche's disagreement with Schopenhauer on free will influenced his own views.
42:14 😟 Guilt is a common human feeling that Nietzsche believes is tied to the concept of free will.
43:48 🤯 Nietzsche argues that the feeling of guilt arises from the belief in free will and moral responsibility.
45:21 🤔 Our ability to imagine alternate choices after making a decision contributes to the belief in free will.
46:52 👥 Nietzsche connects the concept of moral responsibility, free will, and guilt in the human mind.
49:45 💭 Nietzsche explores the idea that beliefs reveal more about individuals than about truth.
53:10 🧐 Nietzsche criticizes determinists who see external causes as overwhelming their own will.
55:39 😩 Some people embrace the idea of unfree will to avoid facing their own weaknesses.
58:04 🤷 Nietzsche acknowledges the complexity of human motivations regarding the belief in free will and unfree will.
01:00:53 🤯 Nietzsche challenges the traditional notion of causality and the ego as explanations for human behavior.
01:02:15 🧠 Nietzsche rejects the concept of free will in both libertarian and compatibilist senses, as he does not believe in a unitary self as an uncaused cause of thoughts and actions.
01:04:38 🔄 Nietzsche's framework for understanding human beings opposes both free will and determinism, focusing on moral responsibility as the core of his critique.
01:05:44 🌌 Nietzsche challenges the concepts of causality and free choice, advocating for a perspective that embraces necessity and fate as explanations for human actions.
01:07:12 🪙 Nietzsche's view of human will can be described as fatalism, where individuals accept their fate as a necessary consequence of their nature, and greatness lies in embracing it.
01:09:14 🌟 Nietzsche envisions a future extramoral phase of humanity where revenge and the desire for retribution are replaced with a more enlightened perspective on justice and morality.
01:10:14 ⚖ Nietzsche suggests treating criminals as individuals in need of medical care and psychological help rather than as inherently evil beings deserving punishment.
01:21:54 🔄 Nietzsche encourages individuals to seek and discover what they are meant to become, emphasizing that one's nature and fate are continually evolving.
31:18
But is this not intentionality?
Motive->planing->action
What might be a illusion is meta-intentionality, ergo intending one’s intention.
To me, free will means a sense of agency/autonomy in decision making exists, then i would say that we have "free will", but we can't be completely free in what we like, who we are and what we are made of and the makeup of our drives and will. But if we are aware of everything that makes up the human creature to overcome it, we direct our "free will" with everything that we're made of to the most that we can become.
Even as a compatibilist, I've replaced the idea if free will with will-to-power.
People who tend to argue for absolute free will are also people who rely on their image and "credit" to succeed. Why would you not argue for max agency if you were successful ? Or especially if you're an academic trying to get footnotes ?
“We’ve not the strength to follow our reason all the way.”~ Francois La Rochefoucauld
Excellent, and very helpful.
19:00 I think this pre-historic view of morality had to be dispensed with. As it is retroactive - you do things and you are judged by the result be it good or bad, it has no notion of redemtion, or it cannot be conceived in such framework. It's very blind to the possibility of improvement or the intent of the doer. If a man walks on a tight rope and falls he will be laughed at as being bad. In fact i think this view is still present in majority of people.
1:12:00 You can only afford to tolerate small slights against yourself. Justice is there for people who are afraid for their life. Noble people who have nothing to be afraid of dont need to worry about it as they are powerfull to allow some parasitism. But most people are always going to be meek and will require justice to be at peace with themself.
I think David Bentley Hart has the best argument against Free Will... even though I'm not a Christian & think it's base presupposition the most absurd idea one could possess.
Humans can't have Free Will because they make wrong choices all of the time, or those that go against their own best interest.
A Free Will would be an Omniscient Will, which would never make a choice wrong for itself, and this, as experience shows... is not the case for humans.
He uses an example of one knowing what one's choices are, which are... a thing that will kill one behind one door, and a beautiful woman behind the other door... that one could marry if chosen, and that obviously... a Free Will would NEVER choose the former door, yet humans invariably choose the former much of the time.
This is a defective, thus, not Free Will, whatever it is encumbered by.
An encumbered will isn't free, and our will's are so encumbered & qualified by things because we are finite beings... that it can't be " Free. "
Just had my coffee, so I hope I explained it clearly, and didn't do injustice to Hart's position...
Those are the same doors. Best not to walk through any door in that case.
Such good work man.
Nicely done. Thank you. My own take on free will is that I doubt nature would have selected for us such large brains and wrinkly frontal lobes only to give us the illusion of being able to plan, weigh pros and cons and make decisions -- which I consider all components of free will. I also think that any discussion of what free will is or isn't -- whether by Nietzsche (my favorite writer) or anyone else -- always benefits from staying away from the moral question as long as possible -- since that is not why we evolved to have whatever it is we call free will. First figure out how what we call free will gives us a edge in survival -- helps us to hunt that water buffalo over there -- and only then look at how we end up applying this phenomenon to our moral lives.
What people say when they mean "free will" is that the will is free from any cause. That one couldn't say that 'my brain chemistry made me do this' because ultimately the metaphysical self overrides all physicality. It stems from the idea that god made us, but anything we do after that is on us and not on god. Of course it is patently absurd to say that we are free from causes. Even if our behavior appears random on the face of it, which it never is even in mentally ill people, there is an underlying cause. Fundamentally one cannot be "free" because there is nothing in the universe that is not interconnected with something else in some way.
Planning for the future isn't really free will. Many animals plan for the future too, instinctually even. We know for sure that some people are better than others at forward planning and we can show this with brain biology dictating whether or not a person is more impulsive than another person. The only thing we have is that we *feel* free in regards to the future. We *feel* as though we could pick x choice over y, but the reality is that we do not know why. Our brain confabulates reasons why we do what we do, but we don't know that those are the real reasons why we do what we do.
This is also assuming the argument that because nature selects for something, that it must provide efficient utility. Nature isn't perfect. In fact a lot of times nature throws its hands up and says 'eh good enough'. For example, we've kept our appendix despite not needing it anymore. It's believed it was once used for digestion, but no longer. Well now it's just an inert organ, doing nothing, taking up space in our bodies. Sometimes it enflames, bursts, and causes sepsis. It would be efficient just to select for people to just not have appendixes anymore, wouldn't it? So it is equally likely with our sense of free will that this is a random mutation, a byproduct of our capability to be conscious of ourselves.
@@cabellocorto5586 Yes, I agree, of course there are causes, but in living creatures causes do not lead to one predetermined effect like in classical physics. Rather the causes pushes us to act in some way -- but the way we act, the effect so to speak can still have something to do with us making a choice. I'm informed in this by Nietzsche -- who at various times doubted both cause and effect and free will -- thinking that they were a human boplar construct that works well in day to day life, but eventually has its limitations. What Nietzsche said was that instead of free will, there were rather many wills, some stronger, some weaker, but all vying to some degree in the individual. What this means to me, as an example, is in the case of a certain kind of stimulus a person may be driven as always to seek escapism in drugs -- his habitual response -- but that doesn't have to be a done deal, even though by habit that is what usually happens -- rather the path to the future in a case like this is open -- so that it can sometimes be the case that the person reacts to the stimulus different this time and chooses to go into treatment. As a final example, the way I look at it is like with quantum mechanics -- meaning it is only when the interaction happens that the wave collapses and all the dominos _then_ line up behind it giving the illusion of determinism. But until that moment the path the particle was going to take was open, undetermined.
I think eventually scientist will realize determinism is an illusion as much as free will. Two ideas that works very well but an illusion nontheless. What's really going on beyond the veil of our sences and perceptions is probably something else altogether. But I would opt for thinking that human lives and the lives of some animals are not determined.
@@longcastle4863 When you say that causes do not push us to act in some way but only inform our decisions, you're assuming that you can know all causes. If someone is more likely to use drugs to cope with stress, of course that doesn't mean that person is guaranteed to do so. However there's a high statistical likelihood of that being the case. But even if it is not guaranteed, that doesn't mean it's not determined. There are a multitude of other factors from circumstance to diet. There's so many factors at play as to be functionally incalculable in practice, but not in theory. If one were to have all information in the universe, one could accurately predict everything. Including quantum physics. Quantum physics is still well within a deterministic universe. The whacky stuff like indeterminacy points more to holes in our understanding of variables than it does these things acting in ways contradictory to how the universe appears to fundamentally work. Even if quantum particles cannot ever be determined, if we are ultimately determined by what undetermined things do, then we are still determined.
When you say something like there not being one will but many wills, then what wills the wills? Do those wills have originators? Then what propels the originators of those many wills to will what they will? If nothing was determined, there wouldn't be any solid foundation off of which to build when constructing models for anything from therapies, medication and mathematics. If everything is freely determined probability goes out the window. We know this not to be the case however, so when something fails to work reliably it seems more pertinent to believe that there are hidden or unknown variables at play rather than nothing being determined.
The lives of humans and animals are built out of component parts that are themselves determined. So this would be like saying that one can construct a house out of lumber on top of a solid foundation and then surmise that because the "houseness" is an emergent property of its construction, that it can move as if it were a ship of its own accord. That is to say, that if we are constructed of component parts that are themselves determined, how would our lives be any different? We haven't discovered any evidence that we transcend the laws of our parts.
My assumption is that the deeper we go into quantum physics and neuroscience, we start to peel back the layers on our ability to believe that we are not determined beings. It seems to me that we are determined beings, but destined to not feel determined because of the incalculably complex nature of the universe with so many parts acting on other parts that our future seems impossible to determine. I don't think we will ever change the schema that we currently operate under: a paradoxical and hypocritical set of beliefs that we are at once free to do as we will but are manipulated by every factor in our lives.
@longcastle4863 I like how you think you can't equate kicking a rock down a hill and neurological rock kicking. Even if each brain is relatively the same, your "aetherial" Self is just a different network of neurons, kicking rocks down incredibly complex physical networks. Just because there is far more complexity doesn't mean it's not
Well done! Thank you.
Does anyone else find it paradoxical that Hitchens is quoted as saying, "We have 'NO CHOICE' but to believe in free will." ?
Most people shouldn't believe in Hitchens
It was a joke. And the opposite would then be true also.
@@averayugen7802no one should believe in anything.
i agree@@ihatespam2
@@averayugen7802 but Hitchens would be a good place to start.
The hypothetical arguments along the lines of ‘if you could replay the scenario, you would still choose them same’ are unfounded empirically since that experiment can never be run.
Well we have some evidence. The laws of physics are universal (as so far as we can see). It’s true that if I shoot two arrows on earth at the same launch point, same force and same angle of launch, they will land the same assuming drag and etc are controlled. The same is true with human beings. It’s chaos theory, however. Humans are so complex and susceptible to certain conditions that even the slightest alteration can result in the greatest differences in end point. Thus if we control for this (rewinding the universe to your birth and pressing play) everything would play out the same assuming all initial start factors are the same as they where last time.
I’d like to distinguish from a truth claim as a pointer and a truth claim as a tool. As a pointer, I would tend toward free will being illusory. As a tool, I would be agnostic, fostering the capability to flip between the two. If it helps me to let go of the pain of a betrayal, it would be more universal to be a determinist. If I want to make some change in my life, I would lean into the assumption that I have some agency in my choices.
In fact you can discover the change of view in regard of human responsabiity in the greek myths. King Oedipus is not guilty because of a moral choice he has made but because of the bad consequences of his deeds. Which means that the focus does not lie in the question of good or bad intention of the acting person, but on the effects of the committed deeds. In German we call this "Erfolgsstrafrecht" instead of moderrn "Schuldstrafrecht" (criminal justice of the effects and criminal justice of responsability (implying free choice).
I guess my question is, if there is no freedom of will, why does Nietzsche bother discussing ideas like the Last Man and Overman, if we cannot choose to be one or the other? Why does he expect there to be some great philosopher of the future, if our historical circumstances proscribe us to remain within predetermined boundaries with no escape? Why does he even use the phrase "will to power" if it is not a product of will, but of fate?
Not that I disagree with his points about free will, it just has wider implications for his thoughts. Though, I do find it a little difficult to believe that the structures in which we live preordain everything and there is no escape whatsoever, which is the argument for criminology that sociologists have frequented for decades now. I would be a walking example of that not being the case, a statistical anomaly. Nonetheless, I prefer the term "agency" instead of free will
Your comments about people who are like “oh, the free will debate is so boring,” “will never lead to any objective conclusion” (as with how many other philosophical questions?), etc. I think betray a sort of anxiety people have about the issue. “We mustn’t go down THAT road…”
I don’t care to identify as a “hard determinist,” but I think something I would call “intellectual cowardice” (especially when it comes to people like JP) really comes into play with people who just go “well, we’ll never know for sure or whatever, but we should just accept it as real, end of story.”
I just see it as one more paradox among countless others. It’s not like, because I can’t take seriously the notion of “free will,” I just laze about all day, moping. Since coming to terms with it, I’ve been a far more happy, patient, and above all, compassionate person. Oddly enough…more motivated as well, though I’m not sure that is causal.
I understand that the purpose of this video was not to say “free will is bullshit,” I just felt the need to add this.
Even more than religion, I’ve found that people are very touchy and emotional when it comes to free will. I’ve seen even the polite suggestion that it may be an illusion (or, as Sam Harris says it, “an illusion of an illusion”) cause people to become quite agitated.
I don’t think that an honest and serious reappraisal of free will needs to be depressing, or to lead to some decadent morass where criminals get carte Blanche to kill or wreak havoc, as many bizarrely seem to assume.
I had developed a similar view on morality and its origins that man's supposed superiority (as you said in the video, divinity) over other beings and non beings also created his suffering. He believed he had divinity in him but that also made him responsible for his actions, which became the source of misery. Why do we seek answers in philosophy? We are deeply wounded by our own conceptions of ourselves and separated the world from the self. We want to heal ourselves, and the only way to do it is to drop our false pretenses and accept our non-divinity, we are all animals and no greater than any given object in this world. And this is not a bad thing. We are not restrained anymore. We are free from the guilt and remorse.
If we have reached this point, then we may also try to heal the society as a whole, to help the victims of our 'justice' and show them the light we have seen. I believe this is what man has to do now. He has to redeem whole of his existence, humanity, even the world itself. We will redeem wars, famine and every 'immoral' action man has made.
We will heal every suffering person, not out of pity but to release them from their shackles.
Although I had not correlated my views with Nietzsche before, it is obvious that his works have unconsciously made an impact to reach this conclusion by myself. Also it proves what we 'free spirits' (hopefully) should do to heal ourselves.
What is it that Nietzsche in "the geneaology of morality" II part; aphorism 12, is talking about, when he says: what Huxley accused Spencer with - his "administrative nihilism"... but it is about more than about "administering" ?
(my own translation into englisch, I hope you get my question)
1:25:13 Here lays a self-made man, gone to meet his creator 😅
We certainly didn’t make ourselves.
Even if free will doesn’t exist, this doesnt mean that it is pointless to punish crimes. Someone without total free will could still calculate their behaviors based on a given incentive structure.
For example, if they are genetically predisposed to be somewhat risk averse, they may be less likely to commit a crime if the threat of imprisonment is present than they would be to commit a crime if the threat of imprisonment isn’t present.
This logic doesn’t suggest an uncaused cause for human will, it suggests that various people are going to behave differently within different incentive structures based on their genetic makeup and their previous experiences with the environment.
Basically, the consequence isn’t there to punish people in a moral sense, it is there to disuade people from behaving a certain way.
Wasn't Nietzsche also critizizing the fatalistic view in beyond good and evil aphorism 21 at the end of the passage?
He definitely is. But notice how he often takes the same word and gives it two meanings. So, with fatalism, there is a passage where he speaks of “Mohammedan fatalism” - where the individual feels himself weak, compelled, resigned to his fate. But in talking about Goethe in Twilight of Idols, Nietzsche offers him as an example of a higher man and praises his “trusting fatalism”. Rather than feeling resigned or held in chains by a deterministic world, the trusting fatalist accepts whatever comes and says “Yes!” to it as an act of a strong will. This is why, as he says, it is really a matter of strong and weak wills. Free will was an illusion: but in terms of one’s attitude, free will can be a strong ideology or a weak ideology; so too can determinism be a strong or a weak ideology. I prefer to think of my outlook as the “trusting fatalism” view: a determinism of strength as it were.
@@untimelyreflections Thanks man, that's what I thought, but I appreciate your validation of it!
Who is he reffering to with "la religion de la souffrance humaine" at the end of this Aphorism 21 (beyond good and evil), christianity, buddhism (or Schopenhauer)?
Can you tell the exact aphorism he's writing about "Mohammedian fatalism", I thought he's only "shooting against" christianity and buddhism, but I guess in his days you could go against every religion (not as today!)
@@untimelyreflectionsI don't understand. How does one change their attitude if one has no free will?
You have some interesting commentary.
Nietzsche’s philosophies are addicting to learn about.
Reality is different in different states of consciousness. One’s understanding of the world is different in waking vs. dreaming vs. deep sleep. Each state is qualitatively distinct from the other. For example, the sense of doership is totally absent in deep sleep, while in the dream state, the personal identification to any activity is often confused and uncertain. When operating in the waking state, awareness is generally identified and engaged with the sensory body and the perceived world around it. These three states are transitory and relative to each other. Underlying the relative states of consciousness is pure consciousness or Being. Being is an unchanging and ever present field of silence or non-activity. The identification with any of the relative states is a mistake the intellect makes when it overlooks the silent Witness of all phenomenal existence. Free will begs the question who is it that is the true agent of activity. There is no need for an individual doer. That there is a sense of someone doing anything is a made up construct learned early in life; it’s an evolutionary useful adaptation adopted by Homo sapiens. Its utility vanishes once there is the direct realization that Being is the source of all that arises in conscious experience. This is not metaphysics (necessarily), the Witness is ever present. Right now the Witness is present. There is no free will because there’s no doer to exercise it. But so long as the one is ignorant of one’s true nature, the adoption persists.
You can't decide one way or the other on the basis of logic and fact.. so choose the answer .. the one that makes you happy.. you know which one that would be.. that you are free and creative.. and living is fun..
Great job!
In order to say that there is no such thing as "free will", let alone that society e.g. legitimate jurisprudence abandon the concept, it would be necessary to define the term with some universally applicable comprehensive parameters of closure. Including on the part of such a person as would presume to provide such ultimate definition avoiding the fallacy of arguing from the part to define the entirety. The part being of course any individual's finally isolated subjective experience of deliberate observation and intentionality. With any attempt to do so ultimately doomed to collapse under its own weight, such as in Wittgenstein's characterization of Frege and Russell's stark ideal of achieving some ultimately true closure defining the workings of language. Consider also Gödel's incompleteness theorem. As to which is it not the case that the game, as it were, of 'defining' many words reflecting the ultimately inaccessible experience of others' individual subjectivity has to depend not so much on concise exactitude attempting some manner of precise closure, but the 'game' of accomodating illustration by example, such as in Jesus's parables? As for any person failing to appreciate, let alone attempting to outright deny, the essential necessity of such illustration for effective "free will" use of language and indeed whatever infinitely unfolding nature of the concept of "free will" in itself - might such a person by their very example correspondingly contribute to some observers' better appreciation of the concept of "absurd"?
Examples of words self evidently in this aspect having to be considered ultimately rather as flexible concepts, including also by implication of their functionally illustrative interrelation include: conscience, contrition, responsibility, sacrifice, justice . . .
How is it healthy to say to someone, "You are your passions" ? That is equivalent to telling an alcoholic that they are their alcoholism.
Right, telling someone that they are what is inside them is somehow the “equivalent” of telling someone that they are an external substance outside of themselves. Totally the same thing.
@@untimelyreflections Ah, thank you for that razor-sharp distinction between "internal" and "external" forces, as if the line between the two is as clear as black and white. Let me break it down for you. Whether it’s a passion, an addiction, or a biological drive, these impulses are all part of the same messy package of being human. Just because something comes from “inside” you doesn’t mean it defines you or that it’s even remotely healthy to give it free reign.
Take a passion, for example-something you might feel deeply about, something that pushes you forward. That passion is, at its core, just another kind of impulse, like an addiction. It feels good, right? It’s alluring, intoxicating even, like the rush an alcoholic feels with a drink in their hand. But are we really going to say that someone *is* their alcoholism? Of course not, and that’s the point. You don’t become one with your addiction, nor do you become one with your passion, just because they happen to originate inside you.
And here’s the kicker: not every impulse deserves validation. Just because something feels natural or deeply ingrained doesn’t mean it’s a good thing to indulge. Let’s consider the example of hunger-something as basic and instinctive as it gets. You feel hungry, so you eat, right? Simple enough. Except what if you’re already overweight? That hunger is leading you astray. So how is that any different from being driven by a passion that might ultimately be destructive?
Or take desires that are rooted in something biological, like sexual attraction. You might think, “Well, at least I desire something socially acceptable,” but again, that doesn’t make the desire a part of who you are-it’s just another impulse. You don’t get credit for being lucky enough to desire something conventional, just as you’re not condemned for feeling something less typical.
In the end, these impulses-whether we label them passions, desires, or addictions-don’t define us any more than a malfunctioning body part or a disease does. They’re just signals, some worth heeding, others not. So, no, you are not your passions, just as you are not your hunger, thirst, or asthma. These things are part of your experience, but they don’t get to claim ownership of your identity unless you let them.
So how do we accept when a person makes a decision to take action and unknowing the consequence which ends up "bad" but the intension was for "Good"
You explain better
In order for free will to exist it only has to exist infinitesimally. In order for the absence of free will to exist it must exist absolutely. Given that this is the case I'll roll the dice on free will.
I think you have taken what Hitchens said in a debate he had on his book tour (God Is Not Great, Why Religion Poisons Everything") with a preacher. Hitchen's point was more along the lines (I paraphrase) "Of course I have free will. God (according to a the Bible) gave it to me. Thereforre, I don't have any choice in the matter."
Nietzsche attributes logical errors to the laziness or imprecision of language. Fine, I use religious paradigms to talk to people, even though they aren't perfect. And sometimes a truth is uttered unintentionally
how bout a hightech PreCoded Virtual Reality inside ConCave Earth?
i dont have the words to thank you enouth for your work , but thats just the will not being free
Thank you ❤
Only a few minutes in but the belief in free will seems to be an extension of the human obsession with itself, our over confidence in our “errors” being universal. It seems that no matter what you think you are observing it AFTER it is already thought, meaning that at the very least your consciousness is not choosing.
In short, the only place free will could reside would be prior to consciousness (because how could you observe your thoughts prior to thinking them?) but even then it seems like special pleading to assume that is free when every other object of the universe at that scale works through clear cause and effect.
The conception of a free will at some point being an uncaused cause does not sit well with me. Would this still not make the free will basically irrational and random? If it without cause, it cannot make choices based on anything, it is by definition going to be random or arbitrary which way it swings. I just don’t see any step in the process of action that would permit a free will in the weird intuition of the whole. If any free will libertarians are reading this, could you please let me know how a system of free will would work explicitly and in detail?
How would a will make non-random choices without relying completely on causes such as mood, memories, biological pathways, or reason?
I think it’s in the Gay Science where Nietzsche has a passage about free will that I hope you touch on, about people observing that they think a thought and then it is acted out, and immediately assume it was them, despite being completely unaware of all of the processes involved. Anyways, excited to hear your analysis!
Read Rudolf Steiner philosophy of freedom.
What i understand of it the queston of freedom comes down to wether we are aware of the driving forces motives etc or not.if we are aware and understand these motives ,meaning that we have made them our own trrough understanding.if not aware the we are not free because we are compeled by external forces.when fully aware trough understanding i cant say i am compeled by anything other then my self so i m acting out of my own freedom.this does not mean that all my actions are free since i am not aware of all motives that compel me but to say i am never fully aware or could become aware of all motives drives etc for a particular act i think is not correct.
Yeah, Hitchens seems to have been an intuitionist about free will and morality. He may have been influenced by G E Moore: our direct and irresistible experiences of free will and morality more firmly justifies them than any abstract, philosophical criticisms could possibly undermine them.
I was expecting something about 'free will' , what is it? where does it work? what does it do?
Tell me, how often do you decide to make a bad choice? if you never decide to make a bad choice, how then can any choice be called good? you only choose.
We make choices but don’t choose our choices 😂
Well… does the mere ability to choose constitute free will? You may need to first answer that ..
@@WSdogz An ambition has direction to an objective, or you could say the ambition defines the objective. 'Will" is the propelling force of an ambition. when you choose, will is implied. 'Man' refers to objective born in the imagination. The 'free will' applies to ambition that does not arise from the body but from the imagination.
@@bryanutility9609are you moking proposition or agreeingw with it?
@@anishpro3314 I’m answering his question.
Even today it's kind of unclear how non-philosophers and different cultures think about morality and free will.
Moral realists will often claim that the belief in stance independent moral facts is just the common sense view, but the empirical research on this is just starting and it doesn't yet support that claim.
If fate is true does that also mean that we do not have free will? Can someone decipher those two im not smart enough to do so.
I just look at it as to get to a destination (fate) you can take a bus, plane, walk, drive, etc and so on (free will) but to be very realistic every person's true fate is death eventually. Just to simplify. We can be a hero or a villain, a teacher or a dunce. Reap what you sow. Some food crops grow every year, some grow fast and ruin the soil. All are food. 🤔
@@UrbanPovertist thanks!
Sorry, you are asking too much of life. It cannot be done.
I find it odd that a thinker who held discourse on the will to power discounts the possibility that we humans are origins of our actions. That we can intend. That we can remember. That we can model future effects growing out of possible choices. Why do thinkers, not just Nietzsche, immediately jump into discussions of morality when discussing free will? To me, free will is a natural assumption we have because we freely plan and act. It's where our technology comes from. It's our power, out "all too human" power. Unless Nietzsche linked his discussion here about free will with there about the will to power effectively, I'll have to judge Nietzsche as failing to get at the heart of what he was grappling with.
We have free will and it's easily demonstrable through deduction. Everyone is confused about what they're talking about.
revisiting after reading sapolsky determined.
I’m re-watching all the episodes after seeing the recent livestream. You really had a problem with Peterson haha. Peterson is not looking at things as a philosopher, but as a physician. and he looks at the society as he would at one of his clients. You can discuss ideas abstractly at a philosophy seminar but then comes life and you got to be practical. I remember watching Chomsky say „moral relativism is like sceptism. nobody really lives like that. they wouldn’t survive 5 minutes.” Peterson probably realises what influence he has gotten and wants to do spread a more practical message. I’m not defending him, but I felt like writing this after you namedropped him in 5 episodes in a row 😂
awesome work with the podcast regardless. thank you for doing this!
is so sad that people that study academia without being part of it still think a political scammer like peterson deserves any attention it has come to a point that whatever works link to him it gets automatically rejected by my team, so sad that bright minds get scammed when there's so many philosophers that said anything misinterpreted for him far better and far long ago.
Yes. Jordan Peterson is a total bullshit artist and will be forgotten in the dust bin of history is less time than it took him to get his last perm from his hair dresser. Just another Rush Limbaugh.
Personally do not believe in free will. But I believe the study of evolutionary psychology can show a reason why people still should be held responsible for their actions. That reason is that we need to exist as a group to survive. And if the actions of an individual threaten that group then that individual has to be punished and taken out of society for the greater good of the whole. It all comes down to evolutionary programming and survival.
Meh Peterson... You don't need that as a foundation, justice is corrective you fix the deterministic mechanism. You have either chaos or determinism, isn't it? You can have some chaotic determinism, like the double pendulum, unknowable completely as chaos will accumulate and grow by deterministic means, so you can predict them short term I guess.
Mores is pronounced '' more ease'' , otherwise excellent analysis!
04:50 - incorrect, it's not that the will is completely free from the material and uncaused, it's that you don't understand the cause
Wrong.
@@untimelyreflections So you do understand the cause? Brilliant, then you can be the first of these philosophers to demonstrate that free will doesn't exist in the real world through empirical methods. Go ahead.
Here's my issue with the discussion of whether we should punish people who do harm to others: If there is no free will, then there is no real choice of whether "we" would punish people who do harm to others. And so, even if some are destined to explore the idea that people who are compelled by destiny to do harm to others, and so they should not be punished from a position of revenge.... that point of view is pointless because others are compelled by destiny to do what they think they are "choosing" to do, which may include punishing harm-doers out of a position of revenge. So this discussion seems pointless, even though I might be destined to find it so.
Also, regarding the lynching of an elephant bit.... Causing the elephant to suffer seems cruel. However, if it seems likely the elephant would kill again, whether by it's free will or pre-determination, it would be idiotic to let the elephant live in circumstances where it could kill again. So, however unfortunate the circumstances an elephant endured to become a killer, or however a human becomes a killer, killing an elephant, or killing or jailing humans seems the most practical approach to deal with serious wrong-doers. To to otherwise seems unworkable and impractical. To say "Oh, this person has killed people on several occasions, but since he was pre-disposed to do so, we will let this person kill more people, as he/she is likely to do." That seems an idiotic position, or at best, Californian.
There will be no free will as long as our actions are dictated by desires we didn't choose. PLR
It was always your fate to believe that
It was also your fate not to believe that
cruelty stems from passion.
If you have no free will you have no freedom. That's the number one thing that create deception because people believe in something just because someone else said that without proving it themselves that works for them or not. Let no man teach you!!! You have to be able to get the knowledge and put it to test until you yourself prove that's actually true otherwise you can be deceived. So free will is very very important, that's freedom of choice and knowledge and that's what create the person that we are otherwise we will be living the live or the "truth" of other people which can end up creating suffering in our lives.
"Freedom's just another word for, Nothin' left to lose."
The only true choice for free will is NEITHER when the choice comes from outside of self 🤔
There's ways in which I can agree with this, and ways in which I can't. For example Nietzsche's idea of criminal justice seems like a good idea for some people, such as pedophiles. If it is true you were born this way then we have to change who you are through means such as chemical castration and even a death sentence in extreme circumstances
Eugenics is also back on the table as if things such as depression, anxiety, bipolar disorder, etc etc are shown to be genetic then the moral thing to do is preventing them from breeding
Generally though I believe in a more moderate form of free will. Your conscious mind is your free will and you are in control of that, but your subconscious mind is your Fate and you are not in control of that
Those disorders are manageable with a good environment, support network, and medication without too much issue. People with serious genetic disorders such as Huntington's disease and Tay-Sachs shouldn't breed.
"Only a few minutes in"
No, please, listen to the whole episode before commenting. Listen through, listen attentively. A lot of garbage is put out regarding this topic and Essentialsalts did a wonderful job of not dumbing it down, neither simply falling for the same clichés and reductive objections.
why is the background in the thumbnail british
Are birds free from the chains of the skyway. Bob Dylan.
Is Bob Dylan free from sounding like a croaking frog when he sings?
Anti citizen x has a good video on free will and kinda covers it well ^^
The intro seemed pretty naïve. Just because some people debate it doesn't mean it's not getting anywhere. A more rational way to look at it is that the claim of free will is completely unsubstantiated, and as extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, free will must be seen as nothing but a social convention. Of course people are arguing it, just as people argue that the earth is flat.
So what is the mechanism for choice. In the supermarket i am in the cerial isle and there are over fifty choices of which perhaps six or seven are in the running. So already i am constrained. I could have gone down the healthfood section in its own area. I could have visitedother stores. I couldhave gone on Amazon but i didnt. The thought never arose. How much time are you dedicating to this choice? And at what point do i stop the decision making process? Of Course it is said that God gave us free will as though thks was not the default position. Trees dont have free will or birds or sheep. But them there is Hell! The biggest constraint on free will there is, guaranteed to keep the faithful in line. If you think you are in control try not to think for even one minute. And do you chooke what thought will come next. Try hard not to think about the ocean. Once the idea is mentioned that is where your mind goes .
All the evidence in physics seems to points out that the universe is determinist and so if that is the case it makes free will non-existent.
The answer is simple my friend. If you can ask the question on whether you have free Will-----THEN YOU HAVE FREE WILL.
You have will, but it is not free. Your decisions are your own, but you could not have done otherwise. Agents do not exist in truth. You are part of the universe, and your actions are not more free than the movement of atoms, as in, totally determined by the starting conditions of the system.
You can say something is fated but never know if it was, dogma.
Is the presented aware of Nietzsche’s deathbed biography, My Sister and I, published by Samuel Roth in 1952? If this is accepted as genuine then it goes a long way to explain his hammering away at the foundations of morality. The Genealogy of Morals makes his antagonism with the subject very evident. He ultimately comes to insist on amor fati. His realization that fate, by which is meant one’s peculiar and unavoidable human condition, must not just be accepted passively but embraced willfully. Thus I am; I am not just a mistake of my creator or a victim of fate for thus I will to be. Or to speak religiously, thus my God, who is beyond good and evil, has made me to be.
I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest that a biography written by a Jew more than 50 years after Nietzsche died is spurious at best
@@Laotzu.Goldbug Have by any chance read it?
@@carlharmeling512 no, not a word, nor heard of it before. My judgment was entirely based on the factors I mentioned: author and date.
By doing some *very* light research right now, I am only more assured.
"My Sister and I is an apocryphal work attributed to the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. Following the Nietzsche scholar Walter Kaufmann, most consider the work to be a literary forgery."
_"My Sister and I"_ makes several bold and otherwise unreported biographical claims, most notably of an incestuous relationship between Nietzsche and his sister Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche, as well as an affair with Richard Wagner's wife Cosima. It is written in a style that combines anecdote and aphorism in a manner similar to other Nietzsche works.
(via Wikipedia)
Considering this, and that the author Samuel Roth is the same of _Roth v. United States_ (1957) in which he pushed for the mainstreaming of degeneracy, it seems to be yet another perverse and spiteful Jew taking aim to smear a man who spoke critically about Jews, after he was dead and unable to defense himself.
@@Laotzu.Goldbug Samuel Roth had very high regard for Nietzsche and was sharply critical of Jewish behavior towards non Jews. Before you listen to that dope Kaufman, who had his own reasons for calling the book a forgery, try reading it and if you know Nietzsche as well as I do you’ll be pleasantly surprised by what you read.
Free will is not absolute. Partial Will is the most likely answer. Debates and podcasts are irrelevant if there is no Will
Podcasts are irrelevant if there's no free will? That doesn't follow. It's just me giving you information. Even if it is determined whether or not that information affects the outcome of your life... that doesn't mean that the information can't affect the outcome of your life. Sorry but this kind of objection is just tired.
From the philosophy of freedom by rudolf steiner.paraphrazing.....the act of cognition......by percieving anything outward or inward before aplying thinking i just percieve percepts.......i use thinking to bring fitting concepts to these precepts....if the concepts fit i expirience understanding........i dont have to apply my thinking to the percepts...i can just stare and be aware of them....if i want to understand them i have to use thinking.....nothing in the given (percepts) compels me to do this i freely choose to do so.
In the Noble Quran, the criminally insane are not blameworthy
Automatons are not Slaves they are Avatars
I can't help but disagree with Nietzsche's (or your interpretation of Nietzsche's) opinion on justice. For one, justice as retribution for wrongs is almost as directly an expression of noble morality that I can imagine - you are repaying tit for tat; not taking a blow and turning the other cheek but returning a blow in kind. For two, and on purely self-serving grounds, I'm not liable to accept the notion that society or an individual should be armed with the moral hammer to start calling people it disagrees with as 'sickly' and in need of 'rehabilitation' - I mean, seriously, how many dystopian novels does that conjure up the image of? '1984', 'Brave New World', even 'One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest'. Do you really mean to suggest that a 'hothouse of the strong like Venice or Rome' functioned as such by treating political opponents as clay invalids rather than granite competition? It certainly does not conjure up the image of nobility - of knights jousting or Perseus slaying Medusa (I mean, really, Medusa just needed some Benzedrine, Perseus was really out of line!).
Lastly, using the phrase, "become who you are" as a base for some linguistic algebra, I believe Nietzsche's "position" on free will is reducible to a determinist/essentialist position:
"Your becoming is your becoming"
Simply a restatement of two terms
"Who you are is who you are"
Simply a restatement of two terms
"Become who you are"
Nietzsche's formulation
"You become who you are"
If untrue, then 'You don't become who you are'; this also means that it's possible to 'not be who you are' or 'Who you are is not who you are' which appears to be a logical contradiction. If you are not 'who you are' then, 'who are you'? In my mind, if there is a distinction between a person and their becoming, it is tantamount to denying Nietzsche's psychological observations about human beings, that they are one with their effects.
"You are who you are"
By substituting the term "You become" with "You are" which were demonstrated to be coterminous you arrive at an essentialist statement about human beings, but you've also stated earlier that people are one with their becoming and cannot help becoming who they are, ergo they lack free will and determined by 'who they are'.
Revenge could very well be justice? No?
I wonder what the victim of the crime would think?
The mention of Jordan Peterson in context with these great philosophers is so absurdly disillusioning to me.
he never claimed to be one of the greats. he encourages that we study them and always says that he is a repackager
@@Wingedmagician the criticism was toward you. Imagine discussing great film directors and you mix in a TH-camr with Kubrick and Kurosawa. It was me rejecting political carpetbaggers and finding a different channel to look for freedom from that troll.
The fruit is the red bill. Or is it?! 😂
This idea of causeless will, where "causeless" equates to "free" in a world ruled by causality is pure nonsense. How does this irrational idea of freedom from cause have anything to do with human freedom anyway? Free will is the antithesis of the irrationality of causeless will, as it represents decisions made by way of our power of reason - rationally thoughtful determination. So how appropriate it is that a determined world is a prerequisite for the existence of free will.
Like a will without motive.....is noncense😂
Gosh-- I can't help but feel disgust with this view of free Will. Now you can see how this type of thinking leads to terrible things. We need to understand that our thoughts will dictate our behavior. For instance, if you believe(think) women should be clothed from top to bottom then that will manifest in reality. Like wise, if you believe(think) women can expose themselves fully then that will manifest in reality. So what I'm saying what you think becomes reality...so think wisely! It's not a matter of whether we have free will or not its how we want to live in reality that matters.
You “can’t help” but feel disgust?
So you didn’t freely choose how you felt about it?
Nothing in the video says “we can’t make judgments about human behavior or morals”.
You failed to understand the content, and defaulted to disgust. Do you think this is the operation of a thinking mind, or the impulse of your moral prejudices?
@@untimelyreflections umm no. I'm pointing out that thoughts are reality. So how do you want to live I ask? After all how we live is what matters...right?
@@PinoSantilli-hp5qq "thoughts are reality"? How is this a meaningful statement beyond the trivial obervation that thoughts exist?
I don't see what the questions you pose have to do with free will.
What if you make decisions by coin-toss? What if it rains unexpectedly on a day there is only a 10% chance of rain. What is a distracted driver crosses a boundary and hits your car?