If determinism is true, it's theoretically possible to predict future events as they are already determined. Like what I'm going to eat for dinner next week. But knowing that, I can choose not to eat what was predicted. Which makes the prediction false.
If any avertable future event can't be predicted with certainty, does that lead to indeterminism or simply me being unable to ever know my future actions? Or will the universe "force" me to comply with the determined outcome?
@KeizerrO Do you understand determinism, or omniscience for that matter? Knowing everything isn't a prediction. If you know everything and thereby know what you're going to eat next Tuesday, you don't have a choice about what you're going to eat next Tuesday. If you know you're going to eat this, and the time comes and you eat that instead, then you never knew in the first place.
@0ctopusRex I understand determinism perfectly fine, but I never mentioned omniscience. Point is how can I know something I can prevent? Is it even logically possible for me to know what I'll eat next week if the universe is deterministic?
Most of us would continue to consider ourselves free and responsible even if we became convinced determinism was true – so clearly for most of us the reality of free will is more self-evident than the incompatibility of free will and determinism. This argument is better:
1. We have free will
2. Determinism is true
3. Therefore free will is compatible with determinism
The only rational grounds for rejecting the conclusion of a valid argument is that it is more implausible than the negations of any of the argument’s premises.
For instance, here’s an argument against free will:
1. Free will is incompatible with determinism
2. Determinism is true
3. Therefore we do not have free will
It is deductively valid. But its conclusion – that we do not have free will – is very implausible. It is more implausible than the negation of the first premise.
Why is he using a definition of "inevitability" that no one has ever thought of. He has really confounded the question. They are not using the term literally. Its just an expression which everyone except Dennett seems to get. They mean the future is fixed. Has nothing to do with "avoiding." I don't know if they are right or wrong. But Dennett really needs to give this line of thought up. Its a dead end anyway.
@PurpleGhost In determinism even the "choosing" is fixed.The "range" of options is illusory. I dont think anyone is disagreeing with his line of reasoning, except for the fact that he is arguing something that no one is really thinking. I believe thats called a 'red herring' which is valid, but irrelevant.No one is using "avoidance" meaning as he is.I know philosphers nit pick, but he has never had that problem; except with this. Its just odd. Maybe just out of touch with what people mean.
I think perhaps, you might have misunderstood the nature of what he was saying about using that term 'avoidance' - he said specifically that there isn't an exact term for what he wants to describe. That english doesn't have one, so he's using 'avoidance' as a 'close-enough' stand in.
He's trying to bring about a novel concept, so that no one else is using it that way, only makes sense.
I take it then that you don't like his mix of 'determinism+some-choices'?
I should amend, it seem to have less to do with if you 'like' it, and more to the point, that you seem to feel /that/ is not what determinism is.
Determinism is an unfalsifiable concept, it can not be tested by science, and will always appear to apply whether or not it is correct (since that can't be tested) - that alone makes me dis-satisfied with it.
If I had to choose though, I find his version of determinism much more satisfying than the one you speak of.
@PurpleGhost I'm not pro or against determinism. And I know exactly what Dennett means. I'm just telling you that his version although logically valid is not the sense that most use. And everyone knows that determinism is unfalsifiable. You don't think free will is falsifiable do you? I don't see the point of this. You seem to at least get that there are multiple interpretations here. But we're now doing what Dennett is doing, which is arguing two different things.
@PurpleGhost The "avoiding" presupposes free will. Simple as that. Its just faulty logic. Dennett is not a god, he makes mistakes too. Its not an issue of "misunderstanding." Its just pointing out a logical error. But I appreciate your attempt to explain, but its not necessary to do so when the logical error is of such enormity.
Yes, it does indeed, but that was his point: that the two are not en-athema to each other. He does an entire talk about how their compatibility. *shrugs* I don't know that it is an error, but I also don't know that it isn't. The topic is interesting to consider, but troublesome at the same time.
I'm sorry for any frustrations, I just wanted to help if I could.
@PurpleGhost No worries, its fun to pass ideas around. We don't need to "help" each other. On your anathema point: Here is one of the errors... Dennett uses "avoiding" as a premise for free will. "Avoiding" is an act that requires free will. So, he is using free will to prove free will. Its neither right nor wrong. Its just a circular reasoning fallacy. Not good enough for a philosopher of his stature. Maybe his colleagues are too intimidated to point this out to him.
@qigong1001 Yes, it can be a good source of learning too. :) Need, perhaps not; but I always want to help people if I think I can.
I do see what you mean. Although I wonder if perhaps he is just using it as an example, because it's a behaviour we clearly posess. Like using the fact that we have thirst, to prove that we have needs, even though thirst is a need. Do you see? Using the results, to backwards extrapolate.
But, even then, still doesn't seem a good "proof". *frowns* Hm.
I don't know enough about it to draw any solid conclusions. Though I find myself agreeing with you more, as I put thought into it. It does seem sloppy reasoning.
Find myself wondering also, if perhaps it's just that the topic itself, because of it's very nature (not being able to be studied with evidence - at least not easily) is just too amorphous to make any good points about. But that might be giving him too much credit, it might just be purely sloppy thinking.
@PurpleGhost You may have hit on it. It may mean different things to different people. I wish he was using "harm avoidance" as just an example. Unfortunately its in his book and almost every interview he gives on this topic. He has also stated that 'free will' may be an illusion anyway. That made me think that he is just trying to be controversial. Im not sure what his motive is...maybe sloppy or controversial or just gone crazy...who knows. I prefer QM as a mechanism for possible free will.
Hah. Can't rule our any posibility; controversy causes interest, interest is needed if you want other minds thinking of answers along side your own (just as it is needed for others to notice the ponderance of your own.)
What is QM?? My apologies, I'm not necessarily very familiar with the terminologies of this topic.
@PurpleGhost Oh sorry. QM=Quantum Mechanics. This goes to your point of "range of possibilities" but without the Dennett avoidance mechanism. The mechanism in this case is scientific uncertainty. Are you familiar with it? "Uncertainty" is fundamental to QM. Theres alot of arguing (for and against) its importance in "free will" as well. I think it allows for indeterminism which gives us "the range." From there its a mystery for now.
I don't understand the math for it, but I understand the concept enough to know what you're getting at. Paticles momentum and specific-location, not being able to be known/measured at the same time, and all that.
I think you are right, this would be a better hinge pin for the arugment. At least we can prove it's existence through external evidence. We know it's happening, even if not why.
The problem with Determinism, is it's sort of like an moral absolute or universal, and as a relativist I find it hard to accept. If people didn't have free will, they wouldn't have opinions or different views about life and you could predict the actions of everyone and everything.
If people didn't have different opinions and disagree about almost everything, heck we'd all get along just perfectly.
The big question is the reason why we are all here? I think it is just chance and indeterminism.
Wait wait just wait...why would someone not have opinions or different views about life if the universe is deterministic? Determinism is NOT a moral absolute. All it says is that everything in life is fixed already.
The different opinions are simply the result of previous happenings and experiences.
Humans are complex organisms so we have complex ways of thought. This doesn't mean that determinism isn't true. Ants behave according to conditions, not their own free will. Consciousness is just complexity, and that's all it is. Adding a spiritual or grandiose meaning to it would be similar to believing in God.
Believing in free will is like believing in God; it's illogical. Neurons send signals according to universal laws and so we are presented with choice, which appears in the form of the illusion of free will. Every action we take derives from a prior point. Just because we cannot predict an event or understand the complexity of deciding to choose something doesn't mean that everything isn't determined.
the question is are we, as essentially physical systems, at any moment like a ball at the top of a hill that given it's position at that moment and the law of gravity has no choice about it's future which is to roll down the hill
Here’s my claim: if we discover that determinism is true, then we have discovered that free will is compatible with determinism.
Why? The incompatibility of determinism and free will is less self-evident than the reality of our moral obligations. And if we lack free will, then we lack moral obligations. Therefore we do not lack free will and ANY argument that suggests otherwise will contain a premise that is less plausible than its negation.
That's right. A mixture of my genetics and environment probably determine what I want to do. But what can you want more than to get what you want? Do you really want to want what you want as well? Determinism doesn't stop me from getting what I want (since I'm biologically hard-wired to do so), so I don't see it as an enemy of freedom.
What I will say is that this does support a more liberal kind of mindset though. Naturally, there are murderers, rapists, paedophiles who were simply unlucky to have the desires they did. This doctrine suggests that such desires should be treated as diseases - and cured accordingly. However, I don't find this notion particularly profound. or insightful; I'm pretty sure everyone would rather remove the desires of bad people, than punish them for their ensuing actions.
Your logic is all over the place. Sure, when we make a choice, we make it because we want to. But, we don't have a free will to decide what we want. We want what we want. We think what we think. We choose what we choose. Nothing about that is free. Free will is still an illusion.
Actually, yeah. I regret the phrasing of some of that comment. My point, really, was that accomplishing your desires is the key to human happiness - and determinism does not deter your from doing this. It's not rape; it's seduction.
However, I do think we can decide what we want, to a degree. Potential sex-offenders can be chemically castrated to prevent them from wanting to commit crime, even if this is fuelled by a desire to not go to jail.
This man is using many words to say a man is free to be what he is, and he will be what he is at all moments of existence. That is Biological Determinism. That is Determinism!
All he's saying is that from an agent's perspective, there are options and abilities. Thinking about things as either free will or determinism in a practical sense is just silly.
There's no compatibility between the two because they are inherently contradictory to one another. You can't have free will in an predetermined existence because no matter options you're presented with, they'll all lead to the same conclusion. Choose to go left instead of right? No matter, the universe will just make you do 4 lefts and you'll go in the predetermined direction anyway. With determinism,the universe will impose its will on you, your "choices" are nothing more than an illusion...
Bcuz my tastebuds autoatically and without conscious effort deliever more pleasure signals to my brain, which remembers those pleasurable signals the next time I go to Baskin Robbins.
I think free will is about whether not we have some non-physical aspect to our consciousness. Which could be true if we havent descovered everything about the mechanics of the universe yet, especially if our brains are evolving and becoming more complex, its for certain we will even descover new forms of science or logic, or even new laws of physics.
[continued] That has nothing to do with determinism in that universe.
As for this Universe, whether there is quantum randomness or not (which means random or determined futures), there is no "ghost in the machine" which can mettle with either of those. If there were, it would also be subject to natural laws and/or randomness. There is absolutely no reason to believe otherwise. Free will is a very pleasant and useful illusion.
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@AEFic ye, his thinking on these topics is very muddled. 'Free will' is just a form 'conscious decision making', and as experiments show that the brain already makes decisions before they enter consciousness, his claim that you can have all the 'free will worth wanting' in a deterministic universe is, at best, premature. A lot more research has to be done on what the function of consciousness is and how 'quantum uncertainty' influences brain processes. He speaks before his turn.
@AEFic He´s cheating in at least two ways. First, he plays some kind of semantic word game around the term "avoid" by deriving the concept of "inevitability" from it, but he really isn´t saying anything substantial at all. Secondly, he is only moving around on a macroscopic level. Even if "agents" have "learned" through evolution to "avoid" things, all this (evolution itself, agents´ learning processes, their acts of avoidance) could still be governed by laws of physics at the subatomic level.
Time is movement. That man said that the future is inevitable even if its deterministic or not but that is false statement in my opinion. What if all movement would stop in the universe, then time would stand still and there would never be no future. That means that there is a chance that the future will be indeterministic.
It is plausible that you can only have moral obligations if it is possible for you to do what you are obligated to do. A moral obligation to do something impossible is nonsensical.
Yet if, given the past and the laws of nature, there was no possibility of me making any other decision than the one I actually make, then I cannot have had any moral obligation to have made a different one.
Thus it seems that whatever I choose to do, I cannot violate a moral obligation. Moral nihilism.
@henryporter101 And your fucking point? I do kind of sort of know that he writes books and articles - twat. I'm addressing his position. You, on the other hand, have nothing whatever to say. So fuck off.
@Clear404 Well go and read one of his books if you know of their existence,you may find he's address the issue of morality.Or does reading a long book require too much concentration?
@Clear404 Your 'free will' and sense of 'morality' went out the window because some guy, staying up late at night in Australia, posted a few comments.As for the concept of 'retribution',it's going to happen in this deterministic world as your comments illustrate.
@Clear404 Your sense of 'free will' and 'morality' went out the window because some guy in Australia posted a comment.Your comments show that retribution will just happen in a deterministic world.
@henryporter101 Er, what? Something isn't justified just because it happens. So, yeah, I'm bloody sure people will continue to hold one another retributively responsible even if determinism is true, but that does NOT show that the kind of free will needed to justify holding someone retributiely responsible is compatible with determinism.
Incompatiblism isn't the view that retribution will cease if determinism is true! It is a view about what is needed to 'justify' such practices.
@Clear404 Natural selection doesn't care about epistemology-it doesn't need or care about 'justification'.I'm not sure what type of retribution you're talking about.Is it societal or personal or both?Societies and individuals seek retribution for all sorts of stupid reasons.If someone is amenable to moral education then they ought to be given a chance by society,but if they're not,they ought to kept out of society.A particular desire for retribution depends on a given individual's disposition.
@henryporter101 Once again, something isn't justified because it happens. Tell me all the stories you like about how and why people blame one another etc, doesn't make a dot of difference - you're missing the point.
The point is this - to be genuinely 'deserving' of punishment for one's misdeeds, one needs to have performed them freely. Agree?
@Clear404 I agree that is the way most people think,but I don't believe we can act in any way that is 'free' in the naive sense of the word.I can't see how anyone is deserving of punishment.Some people need to be locked up and others need to be killed but I don't believe anyone 'deserves' punishment-gratuitous punishment that is.If type of punishment was devised to act as a deterrent to other potential perpetrators,then I believe it would be justified.The person being punished is unlucky.
@henryporter101 But then you admit that we do not have the kind of free will that would legitimise judgements of retributive justice.
That's the test. A compatibilist - and Dennett claims he is one - believes that free will is compatible with determinism. But one of the things free will does (or can in principle do) is make people appropriate targets of retribution.
Dennett says nothing about this. He just talks about a consequentialist approach. That's why his argument is poor.
@Clear404 I'll state that that the concept of retributive justice is based of the faulty premise of 'free will'.For my part,I think Dennett is using the term 'free will' in a foolish way.He's not a determinist in the mechanistic sense because natural selection requires random events to occur.But this doesn't confer any free will on the Human animal:Ants avoid things as well.He's a compatibilist like Hume,'freedom' consists in not being in chains,which is not 'free will' in the common sense view.
@henryporter101 Even given free will, there is no reason that punishment is "deserved". Its clearly an evolutionary imperative that we have the feeling that people that do bad things "deserve" to be punished, thereby creating a deterrent.
I do not think that Dennett defends 'compatibilism' at all well, actually - and I'm a compatibilist.
For what he doesn't really talk about is the elephant in the room - moral responsibility. That is to say, the idea that we can truly 'deserve' (in the retributive sense) punishment for our immoral actions, and indeed, that we can have moral obligations in the first place.
It is here that compatibilism faces MASSIVE difficulties. And he just plain ignores them. Yet they ARE the problem
The fact that an agent can avoid something doesn't mean that the future was evitable. It's just that the avoiding that is done by the agent was inevitable. Show me that it wasn't.
is dennet arguing that we are limited to perceiving a world of free will, but the possiblity of the existence of omniscient entity necessarily means that we actually exist in a deterministic world? if this is the case, then the arguement can never be defeated or proven
I could really do with some help here guys on this matter. What I want to know is if there is no free will and I myself is not making any choice what so ever then how come I choose for example to decide to meet my friend later this evening ? so bloody confusion all this.
@koda215 A decision or 'choice' is a mental event that terminates a process of deliberation. Determinism is not the thesis that such processes do not happen. Thus there is no item in your experience of decision making that is strictly speaking 'incompatible' with the deterministic thesis. You chose to meet your friend after weighting the alternatives. But that mental process was a series of mental events, all of which were determined to happen given the past and the laws of nature.
@koda215 The interesting question is whether the deterministic picture of decision-making is compatible with our 'idea' of free will. It is certainly compatible with our experience of decision-making. But perhaps not with our idea of what free will must involve.
Our common sense conception of free will is that it involves having alternative possibilties and that these must be directly available to the deliberator in a way that only indeterminism can provide.
Dennett's view is that every variety of free will 'worth wanting' is compatible with determinism. The problem is that a significant kind - the kind needed to make us truly deserving of blame and praise for our deeds - is absent. Of course, it is probably absent if indeterminism is true too, and may actually be incoherent. But that doesn't alter the fact that compatibilist free will just 'aint up to making us responsible.
Try to only focus on what parameters apply to our particular ecosystem.Then check how it matters to our personal contexts.personal is you and others like you. Ever overestimate the value your argument? What certainty do you have that an underestimation is any better? A real mistake is to think the ecosystem is centralized according to our judgments.It all began with a violent "bang". Lifelessness and an absence of agents is to our advantage because we can know it.
Mental masturbation. What's the point? Determinism, nondeterminism; randomness.... STOP! You're both right. Mop N' Glow is both a floor polish and a dessert topping! There's no correct answer. There's no incorrect answer. Just opinions, and perspectives. Very human. This exercise of futile cogitation requires 15 pounds of very insufficient, very human gray matter. ...and a sense of humor over a glitch in reasoning.
I agree with him on his claim and i also agree with him on that a underteministic world does mean more free will for the individual just cause something is undertemined.
@PurePower025 I watched other lectures from him and he is saying determinism does not effect moral philosophy, because random does not make people accountable. I agree with this. From a mathematical abstraction standpoint, the two are not compatible. In other videos, he makes this clear, so i agree with him. What he seems to be saying in this video however, is objectively wrong.
as long as you can not find something that is truely random, everything could be predicted. and there fore you can not have free will. ether way you could not feel the difference. but if you where to turn time back to the start of humanity. every single event would turn out exactly like it has. without free will !!!!
Determinism = Given some start conditions and rules for the system, each state in time will be predetermined by causality. In other words, nothing in that system can "avoid" any predetermined states, because the avoidance is already built in to the rules of that system. Really don't get what he doesn't understand about that. His argument is that we will be able to read future states and thus change them. That's free will. The two arguments are not compatible, no matter how long he rambles on.
@bryanpicchiottino Let's say we built a machine that sees in the future. Would we have free will then, if we can alter the future based on what we see in it? I don't think so, because the construction of the machine was predetermined. So if we were to change the future, we would only change it so many times that our predetermined nature would allow us to.
@SoundwaveRomania Anything within a system is built into the rules of a given system. It is impossible to place a determinism machine that determines the future of a system if it is inside that system. Rather, only if it is outside the system and does not interact with the system. You can simulate all this with a computer program.
@bryanpicchiottino You're assuming that the system(s) are linked indefinitely. Yet you're forgetting that time can be countered (based on our current laws of physics). So it is entirely possible that there is no "one" system and instead several, in addition, these systems are not linked. So if we were then able to counter time and travel from one system to another, we would have then ultimately broken the rule of determinism.
@Exofluke If we could travel from one closed system to another, neither is closed.. Your argument is invalid. Two "sets" of determined causes/reactions are still determined.. If they interact they are not closed. If they cant interact and are closed, you just have two "sets" of determined systems.
@pappapaps Determinism boils down to being ultimate control and predictability, basically. Now if we had ever broken that control by becoming unpredictable, like the idea of countering time and traveling from one system to another, then we've still got a lot of learning to do. Point is, time shouldn't be voided so easily.
@Exofluke If we countered time then time is something else than what we see it to be. If we could counter time or travel from one system to another its still predictable. We can only talk about being unpredictable. We cannot do it. That would be like magic and magic does not exist. So its only a thought to be unpredictable. If the possibility is there, then you can do it, and then we could analyze how you got the point of doing it, which would once again proof that it was predictable.
@pappapaps Time can be "countered" (I should use that loosely) by traveling at the speed of light. That's something you can easily pick up just by watching the science channel. =3 Basically it's possible to travel into the future, but not the past. Traveling in the past creates a paradox. Point is, if we could travel into the future and do so between systems, then what? I'm not here to say that I do know the answer. I'm just saying that we don't have enough info.
@Exofluke I don´t want two debates at once, lets just say that we actually physically can counter time, AND travel between systems. If it is a possibility then it is not unpredictable. Please understand. The debate is not whether we can or not it is about, IF it is possible, it is predictable. So that argument is invalid in the Free will - Determinism debate. We can only imagine the THOUGHT of being unpredictable. Being unpredictable is unrealistic.
@pappapaps Determinism requires full predictability, not partial. If it's true, then everything is predictable, all at once and for every split second of time, however, that's the flaw. To be able to have and know all for every moment of time would suggest that time is absolute... which thanks to Einstein, we know otherwise. So if everything can't be known all at once, then there will be unpredictability and thus determinism is broken.
@Exofluke You are assuming that our current understand of laws of physics are correct, and that is not true. Further on, it doesnt break determinism at all.
@bryanpicchiottino I could really do with some help here guys on this matter. What I want to know is if there is no free will and I myself is not making any choice what so ever then how come I choose for example to decide to meet my friend later this evening ? so confusion all this.
@bryanpicchiottino Not really, he phrased avoid differently it is the whole purpose is to not change the future but commit an action which results in an undesirable outcome that would otherwise happen not happening i.e. ducking when a stone hits you, really does avoid the outcome of being hit by the stone even though in a deterministic universe you would have ducked anyway, this is satisfactory to me their that their is free will.
@Spieldamelenium He said nothing that a half-way competent incompatibilist would disagree with.
He's not a real compatibilist. He says that he's a compatibilist. But the central issue is the kind of free will needed for moral responsiblity. And he says barely anything about moral responsibility.
ONly if he thinks full moral responsibility is compatible with determinism is he really a compatibilist.
@bryanpicchiottino I completely agree with you. I just don't get it. If I try and punch you, you might duck or dodge. But whatever you choose to do, is it possible to have done otherwise? It's an illusion of choice which comes from the nature of language which perceives events as being causal and agents as having a choice. He does offer a good argument in the sense that it seems almost plausible, but a touch of scrutiny devours it.
@bryanpicchiottino He surely agrees with you on the definition,but he understood that your definition of determinism is wrong, and perhaps unnecessary/dangerous for human kind. Because of your defintion of determinisms reduction of human abilities, and free will. His point is that, the free will that matters, is the one that evolves with avoiders, and they can avoid objects, ergo some things are evitable. Your definition of determinism is old school so to say :)
Dennett could maybe be more explicit about the implications of what he is getting at; this is not a determinism which is compatible with a kind of 'magic' free will beyond or outside physical laws, but rather is compatible with the illusion of that will produced by the complex interplay of physical (determined) factors. What he is saying that we don't NEED the metaphysical free will because the mere illusion of free will is enough for our purposes (morality, responsibility).
I feel like the argument against free will is based on since people make decisions based on reason there is no free will. So to have free will people would have to be random and not have reason behind decisions?
This guy is a fucking retard. The whole fucking argument regards semantics. Making abso-fucking-lutely irrelevant distinctions between evitability and inevitability is fucking ignorant. The determinist position doesn't concern whether an agent can avoid a spear or not! The potential is undoubtedly there! But it would assert that the outcome was predetermined and therefore inevitable. He's rambling on about evitability and inevitability in completely the wrong context. Fuck sake.
@Epsilon17Syn I concur with you. I don't agree with determinism distinction that their isn't free will. Granted that can be an arguing over semantics but nonetheless but point I think should be made is regardless if I was always going to make a certain "choice" I am the catalyst of the "choice" made. My brain and mind were part of the cause and effect chain that made the choice and who I am as an person is because of my genetics/environment that I was pre-determined to be.
"Your choice is free, but I know what you're going to choose" is not a contradiction at all. If you're thirsty and I place a cup of water and a cup of ammonia in front of you, I know which one you'll choose, yet you have free will in choosing.
@SoundwaveRomania Right, and I know which one you're going to choose even though you choose with your free will. I can predict your free will choice with 100% certainty, which means your choice is determined ahead of time.
and EVEN if god EXISTS hes fukin USELESS because he doesn't help people... Those people who think god has miraculously healed them or some crazy shit are delusional. hes not gonna help u if he cant help someone starving, yet its absurd how many people pray to god and think hes changing their lives. They have no clue whats really going on
What the hell does he mean; "it makes no sense to say that the future is inevitable"?? It means that, in theory (given enough information, and the ability to process it), every event in the future can be predicted. I don't want to accuse Daniel Dennett of not understanding something so simple.. but then what does HE mean?
This logic is nonsense. His examples still show that the resultants were inevitable, despite his label of evitable, because he does not reduce the actions to their base causal determinants, which is required to make these claims.
And if everything is determinism then what would even be the point of attempting to understand it? Would it make a difference? If you can make no choices then why bother doing anything? Determinism is a pointless philosophy. Twins can lead completely different lives despite near identical genetics and upbringing.
-Because you have no choice! x] Duh. Bo it wont make any difference, nothing CAN make ANY difference. THAT'S the philosophy! :P
Everybody knows it's wrong, and that we do have freewill. It's just that freewill is inconsistent with a lot of other beliefs that we hold, so we need to really look into the question. -The resolution will groundbreaking, whichever way it is.
@flyingturtle22 How about you do some reading instead of trying to extract the answers to life out of a youtube comment? If you're trying to entice an argument, insulting the other party is the wrong way to do it. When you compare life to a rock, you lose all arguments.
I'm not trying to extract the answer to life, but on the existence of free will.
you're the one who contradicted my argument, if you're not going to back up your statements then don't do them at all. I'm saying you're pompous moron because you are.
"When you compare life to a rock, you lose all arguments."
complete fallacious statement, this one is a non sequitur and a strawman argument (if you did some reading maybe you'd know this and avoid making so many logic mistakes).
Dennett takes so long to make his points. Predetermined is different from determined. Determined means that events have a cause. Events occur in nature and people in their interactions with the environment and each other. So events are not pre determined because there are elements that can't be calculated but this doesn't mean that all these things don't have a cause in some way. The cause may be random but it is still a cause but one that can't be calculated because it is random.
ARE there any "random" events?? I mean, it's a nice concept for us when we don't understand the causes of certain things, and a lot of patterns are seemingly ~random~, but...
@SubtleChaotic Good point, If they seem to be random and we have no access to the cause I can only assume so at this stage. Also some things are incalculable in any practical way especially future events.
every sperm is different, there determinism debunked. your telling me that god knew what sperm would be released and that specifically at a certain time you'd be born, that sounds insane.
Actually, YES, the idea does say that "God" (anyone/thing with enough information about the position of particles and energy throughout the universe, with the knowledge of all the physical laws etc, and an ability to process it all as a simulation) could indeed predict.. well not just you, but literally everything.
@SubtleChaotic im a sage u have no clue of the wisdom i possess. try suggesting moles are a sign of mentall illness then googling it to find out its true during the middle ages. makes these philsophers here look like clowns, u need a sophisticated mind for that to come to those kinds of connections
@SubtleChaotic there is no god but man - aleister crowley. You're telling me god knew that a woman would be killed by a shark, that god put that shark there to be that woman's destiny. that just demented. how about the evils performed everyday random killing, torture, if i killed som1 would that be gods will to? see how insane this is its gets crazier and crazier
No, you misunderstand. I'm not saying there IS a God (notice the quotation marks above??). I'm using him - as is commonly done - in a hypothetical sense. .. I don't think I should have to explain myself actually. Try work it out for yourself.
@SubtleChaotic i was saying that determinism is false based on the example i gave. u said i was clueless but then said it was insane. what do i not have a clue about? just b/c ur saying it can be predetermined doesn't mean that i'm wrong and your right. the fact that u said it sounds insane means u understand exactly what im saying
(can't help myself: you haven't offered anything to suggest determinism is false, all you've said is that it's kinda weird that if God knew what was going to happen that he do the things he supposedly does.. I don't believe in a God, ergo - irrelevant. I said you misunderstand, because you misunderstood me. I didn't say things CAN be predicted, I said that's what Determinism says - I was trying to help you understand.)
If determinism is true, it's theoretically possible to predict future events as they are already determined. Like what I'm going to eat for dinner next week. But knowing that, I can choose not to eat what was predicted. Which makes the prediction false.
If any avertable future event can't be predicted with certainty, does that lead to indeterminism or simply me being unable to ever know my future actions? Or will the universe "force" me to comply with the determined outcome?
KeizerrO 1 day ago
@KeizerrO Do you understand determinism, or omniscience for that matter? Knowing everything isn't a prediction. If you know everything and thereby know what you're going to eat next Tuesday, you don't have a choice about what you're going to eat next Tuesday. If you know you're going to eat this, and the time comes and you eat that instead, then you never knew in the first place.
0ctopusRex 1 day ago
@0ctopusRex I understand determinism perfectly fine, but I never mentioned omniscience. Point is how can I know something I can prevent? Is it even logically possible for me to know what I'll eat next week if the universe is deterministic?
KeizerrO 13 hours ago
what a nonsense argument about semantics... none of these arguments have any real meaning.
85jacob85 2 days ago
is is just me or does dennet just state the obvious
TheMrpoxman1 4 days ago
smartest video i have watched in a whole while
Diosukekun 4 days ago
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Most of us would continue to consider ourselves free and responsible even if we became convinced determinism was true – so clearly for most of us the reality of free will is more self-evident than the incompatibility of free will and determinism. This argument is better:
1. We have free will
2. Determinism is true
3. Therefore free will is compatible with determinism
Clear404 1 week ago
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The only rational grounds for rejecting the conclusion of a valid argument is that it is more implausible than the negations of any of the argument’s premises.
For instance, here’s an argument against free will:
1. Free will is incompatible with determinism
2. Determinism is true
3. Therefore we do not have free will
It is deductively valid. But its conclusion – that we do not have free will – is very implausible. It is more implausible than the negation of the first premise.
Clear404 1 week ago
Why is he using a definition of "inevitability" that no one has ever thought of. He has really confounded the question. They are not using the term literally. Its just an expression which everyone except Dennett seems to get. They mean the future is fixed. Has nothing to do with "avoiding." I don't know if they are right or wrong. But Dennett really needs to give this line of thought up. Its a dead end anyway.
qigong1001 1 week ago
@qigong1001
Let me see if I can explain.
Avoiding has everything to do with it; the idea that there is choice, but that choice is within a /fixed range/.
If something is inevitable then there is no /range/, no choice.
If we are able to avoid or not, then we are choosing; if that's the case, then there is a range, then things are evitable.
He's a philosopher, nit-picking vauge meanings is his career path.
PurpleGhost 1 week ago
@PurpleGhost In determinism even the "choosing" is fixed.The "range" of options is illusory. I dont think anyone is disagreeing with his line of reasoning, except for the fact that he is arguing something that no one is really thinking. I believe thats called a 'red herring' which is valid, but irrelevant.No one is using "avoidance" meaning as he is.I know philosphers nit pick, but he has never had that problem; except with this. Its just odd. Maybe just out of touch with what people mean.
qigong1001 1 week ago
@qigong1001
I think perhaps, you might have misunderstood the nature of what he was saying about using that term 'avoidance' - he said specifically that there isn't an exact term for what he wants to describe. That english doesn't have one, so he's using 'avoidance' as a 'close-enough' stand in.
He's trying to bring about a novel concept, so that no one else is using it that way, only makes sense.
I take it then that you don't like his mix of 'determinism+some-choices'?
PurpleGhost 1 week ago
@qigong1001 2nd post.
I should amend, it seem to have less to do with if you 'like' it, and more to the point, that you seem to feel /that/ is not what determinism is.
Determinism is an unfalsifiable concept, it can not be tested by science, and will always appear to apply whether or not it is correct (since that can't be tested) - that alone makes me dis-satisfied with it.
If I had to choose though, I find his version of determinism much more satisfying than the one you speak of.
PurpleGhost 1 week ago
@PurpleGhost I'm not pro or against determinism. And I know exactly what Dennett means. I'm just telling you that his version although logically valid is not the sense that most use. And everyone knows that determinism is unfalsifiable. You don't think free will is falsifiable do you? I don't see the point of this. You seem to at least get that there are multiple interpretations here. But we're now doing what Dennett is doing, which is arguing two different things.
qigong1001 1 week ago
@qigong1001
You have misunderstood.
I wasn't making a 'point', or an argument. You asked "why" & I tried to answer, to the best of my understanding.
I was merely explaining; I had presumed, given you were asking a question, that maybe you were not understanding something.
Clearly though, any confusion you /might/ be experiencing [if you indeed are/were], is not something I could slake.
Until recently I was ignorant of falsifiability, how am I to know what "everyone" [but me?] knows?
PurpleGhost 1 week ago
@PurpleGhost The "avoiding" presupposes free will. Simple as that. Its just faulty logic. Dennett is not a god, he makes mistakes too. Its not an issue of "misunderstanding." Its just pointing out a logical error. But I appreciate your attempt to explain, but its not necessary to do so when the logical error is of such enormity.
qigong1001 6 days ago
@qigong1001
Yes, it does indeed, but that was his point: that the two are not en-athema to each other. He does an entire talk about how their compatibility. *shrugs* I don't know that it is an error, but I also don't know that it isn't. The topic is interesting to consider, but troublesome at the same time.
I'm sorry for any frustrations, I just wanted to help if I could.
PurpleGhost 6 days ago
@PurpleGhost No worries, its fun to pass ideas around. We don't need to "help" each other. On your anathema point: Here is one of the errors... Dennett uses "avoiding" as a premise for free will. "Avoiding" is an act that requires free will. So, he is using free will to prove free will. Its neither right nor wrong. Its just a circular reasoning fallacy. Not good enough for a philosopher of his stature. Maybe his colleagues are too intimidated to point this out to him.
qigong1001 5 days ago
@qigong1001 Yes, it can be a good source of learning too. :) Need, perhaps not; but I always want to help people if I think I can.
I do see what you mean. Although I wonder if perhaps he is just using it as an example, because it's a behaviour we clearly posess. Like using the fact that we have thirst, to prove that we have needs, even though thirst is a need. Do you see? Using the results, to backwards extrapolate.
But, even then, still doesn't seem a good "proof". *frowns* Hm.
PurpleGhost 5 days ago
@qigong1001
I don't know enough about it to draw any solid conclusions. Though I find myself agreeing with you more, as I put thought into it. It does seem sloppy reasoning.
Find myself wondering also, if perhaps it's just that the topic itself, because of it's very nature (not being able to be studied with evidence - at least not easily) is just too amorphous to make any good points about. But that might be giving him too much credit, it might just be purely sloppy thinking.
PurpleGhost 5 days ago
@PurpleGhost You may have hit on it. It may mean different things to different people. I wish he was using "harm avoidance" as just an example. Unfortunately its in his book and almost every interview he gives on this topic. He has also stated that 'free will' may be an illusion anyway. That made me think that he is just trying to be controversial. Im not sure what his motive is...maybe sloppy or controversial or just gone crazy...who knows. I prefer QM as a mechanism for possible free will.
qigong1001 4 days ago
@qigong1001
Hah. Can't rule our any posibility; controversy causes interest, interest is needed if you want other minds thinking of answers along side your own (just as it is needed for others to notice the ponderance of your own.)
What is QM?? My apologies, I'm not necessarily very familiar with the terminologies of this topic.
PurpleGhost 4 days ago
@PurpleGhost Oh sorry. QM=Quantum Mechanics. This goes to your point of "range of possibilities" but without the Dennett avoidance mechanism. The mechanism in this case is scientific uncertainty. Are you familiar with it? "Uncertainty" is fundamental to QM. Theres alot of arguing (for and against) its importance in "free will" as well. I think it allows for indeterminism which gives us "the range." From there its a mystery for now.
qigong1001 4 days ago
@qigong1001
Ahh, thank you, that makes more sense now.
I don't understand the math for it, but I understand the concept enough to know what you're getting at. Paticles momentum and specific-location, not being able to be known/measured at the same time, and all that.
I think you are right, this would be a better hinge pin for the arugment. At least we can prove it's existence through external evidence. We know it's happening, even if not why.
Dennett actually mentions it in passing.
PurpleGhost 4 days ago
@qigong1001 thank you for making that point better then I could
255ad 1 week ago
The problem with Determinism, is it's sort of like an moral absolute or universal, and as a relativist I find it hard to accept. If people didn't have free will, they wouldn't have opinions or different views about life and you could predict the actions of everyone and everything.
If people didn't have different opinions and disagree about almost everything, heck we'd all get along just perfectly.
The big question is the reason why we are all here? I think it is just chance and indeterminism.
XionXXXX 2 weeks ago
@XionXXXX
Wait wait just wait...why would someone not have opinions or different views about life if the universe is deterministic? Determinism is NOT a moral absolute. All it says is that everything in life is fixed already.
The different opinions are simply the result of previous happenings and experiences.
NorthCitySider 2 weeks ago
We must make determinism compulsory, because it is the only scientific view. Belief in 'free will' must be stamped out.
bolshevikML 2 weeks ago
@bolshevikML
But why? Say free will is fictitious. If belief in it causes the human race to be happier, who are we to take it away from them?
JustMereArt 2 weeks ago
Blinky from Pacman is an excellent example of free will in action.
neohashi 2 weeks ago
Humans are complex organisms so we have complex ways of thought. This doesn't mean that determinism isn't true. Ants behave according to conditions, not their own free will. Consciousness is just complexity, and that's all it is. Adding a spiritual or grandiose meaning to it would be similar to believing in God.
JohnSmith88823 3 weeks ago
Believing in free will is like believing in God; it's illogical. Neurons send signals according to universal laws and so we are presented with choice, which appears in the form of the illusion of free will. Every action we take derives from a prior point. Just because we cannot predict an event or understand the complexity of deciding to choose something doesn't mean that everything isn't determined.
JohnSmith88823 3 weeks ago
@JohnSmith88823
I always like to say that we have a will, but it isn't free.
itzahazylife 2 weeks ago
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@itzahazylife
That's true. The complexity our thought is just amazing.
JohnSmith88823 2 weeks ago
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the question is are we, as essentially physical systems, at any moment like a ball at the top of a hill that given it's position at that moment and the law of gravity has no choice about it's future which is to roll down the hill
TheMillersTale2001 4 weeks ago
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TheMillersTale2001 4 weeks ago
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TheMillersTale2001 4 weeks ago
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TheMillersTale2001 4 weeks ago
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Here’s my claim: if we discover that determinism is true, then we have discovered that free will is compatible with determinism.
Why? The incompatibility of determinism and free will is less self-evident than the reality of our moral obligations. And if we lack free will, then we lack moral obligations. Therefore we do not lack free will and ANY argument that suggests otherwise will contain a premise that is less plausible than its negation.
There. I've saved free will. I want a medal.
Clear404 1 month ago
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JustMereArt 1 month ago 5
@JustMereArt Fuck yeah, that's the clearest I've ever seen that stated.
jenko4292 4 weeks ago
@JustMereArt But wouldn't there be determining factors to why you wanted to do something?
KedViper 3 weeks ago
@KedViper
That's right. A mixture of my genetics and environment probably determine what I want to do. But what can you want more than to get what you want? Do you really want to want what you want as well? Determinism doesn't stop me from getting what I want (since I'm biologically hard-wired to do so), so I don't see it as an enemy of freedom.
JustMereArt 3 weeks ago
@KedViper
What I will say is that this does support a more liberal kind of mindset though. Naturally, there are murderers, rapists, paedophiles who were simply unlucky to have the desires they did. This doctrine suggests that such desires should be treated as diseases - and cured accordingly. However, I don't find this notion particularly profound. or insightful; I'm pretty sure everyone would rather remove the desires of bad people, than punish them for their ensuing actions.
JustMereArt 3 weeks ago
@JustMereArt
Your logic is all over the place. Sure, when we make a choice, we make it because we want to. But, we don't have a free will to decide what we want. We want what we want. We think what we think. We choose what we choose. Nothing about that is free. Free will is still an illusion.
itzahazylife 2 weeks ago
@itzahazylife
Actually, yeah. I regret the phrasing of some of that comment. My point, really, was that accomplishing your desires is the key to human happiness - and determinism does not deter your from doing this. It's not rape; it's seduction.
However, I do think we can decide what we want, to a degree. Potential sex-offenders can be chemically castrated to prevent them from wanting to commit crime, even if this is fuelled by a desire to not go to jail.
JustMereArt 2 weeks ago
This man is using many words to say a man is free to be what he is, and he will be what he is at all moments of existence. That is Biological Determinism. That is Determinism!
NIETZSCHEAN14 1 month ago
All he's saying is that from an agent's perspective, there are options and abilities. Thinking about things as either free will or determinism in a practical sense is just silly.
muphart 1 month ago
Evitability in inevitable
KnowledgeIsPowerKiP 1 month ago
"Who cares?" Old people should attain to memories rather than dreams.
TurpentineRec 1 month ago
There's no compatibility between the two because they are inherently contradictory to one another. You can't have free will in an predetermined existence because no matter options you're presented with, they'll all lead to the same conclusion. Choose to go left instead of right? No matter, the universe will just make you do 4 lefts and you'll go in the predetermined direction anyway. With determinism,the universe will impose its will on you, your "choices" are nothing more than an illusion...
SephirothCrescent0ne 1 month ago
@SephirothCrescent0ne I agree. We do not essential make choices.
Why do I choose chocolate ice cream?
Becuz I like it better!
Why do I like it better?
Bcuz my tastebuds autoatically and without conscious effort deliever more pleasure signals to my brain, which remembers those pleasurable signals the next time I go to Baskin Robbins.
Cause and Effect.
HedgehogRebellion 1 month ago
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@HedgehogRebellion Why is that not a choice? Would it be your 'choice' if you chose chocolate ice cream despite not liking it at all??
A 'choice' is a mental event that terminates a process of deliberation. Nothing in the idea of a choice conflicts with determinism.
Clear404 1 month ago
Realistic free will can become reality if you believe in it!
SciTechExplained 1 month ago
Why is Dennett commenting on free will if he lacks the free will to comment on how we don't have it?
squamish4244 2 months ago
The old guy does not understand the consept of determimism in it's whole meaning
aleksi696969 2 months ago
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92nguyenphilong 2 months ago
i am determined to write this comment
92nguyenphilong 2 months ago
3:30 - Value-seeker or valuer.
tutortronix 2 months ago
I think free will is about whether not we have some non-physical aspect to our consciousness. Which could be true if we havent descovered everything about the mechanics of the universe yet, especially if our brains are evolving and becoming more complex, its for certain we will even descover new forms of science or logic, or even new laws of physics.
katzunjammer 2 months ago
Isn't Mr. Dennet simply arguing semantics???
panamega 3 months ago
I was determined to be an avoider...
Entropy56 3 months ago
[continued] That has nothing to do with determinism in that universe.
As for this Universe, whether there is quantum randomness or not (which means random or determined futures), there is no "ghost in the machine" which can mettle with either of those. If there were, it would also be subject to natural laws and/or randomness. There is absolutely no reason to believe otherwise. Free will is a very pleasant and useful illusion.
extropian314 3 months ago
@extropian314 THANK you
pappapaps 2 months ago
Inevitable event: an event which is unavoidable.
Evitable event: an event which either could be avoided, or definitely will be avoided.
Dennett: "Since there is plenty of evitability in deterministic worlds, the old implication of determinism implying inevitability is just false."
[Paraphrase]: Since there are some states which cannot be reached, "determinism implies inevitability" is just false.
Who cares about states that the universe will not reach? [continued]
extropian314 3 months ago
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lightandbeautiful 3 months ago
Does anyone ever feel like Dennett talks his way around the problem, avoiding a clear definition of free will?
AEFic 3 months ago 6
@AEFic ye, his thinking on these topics is very muddled. 'Free will' is just a form 'conscious decision making', and as experiments show that the brain already makes decisions before they enter consciousness, his claim that you can have all the 'free will worth wanting' in a deterministic universe is, at best, premature. A lot more research has to be done on what the function of consciousness is and how 'quantum uncertainty' influences brain processes. He speaks before his turn.
phnaargos 3 months ago
@AEFic well he's an avoiding agent LOL :)
danYulia 1 month ago 3
@danYulia
Haha. Oh, very good.
JustMereArt 1 month ago
@AEFic
Yes, his ability to fill 10 minutes with a solid stream of words and yet in the end, say absolutely nothing never ceases to amaze me.
Tartersauce101 2 weeks ago
@AEFic He´s cheating in at least two ways. First, he plays some kind of semantic word game around the term "avoid" by deriving the concept of "inevitability" from it, but he really isn´t saying anything substantial at all. Secondly, he is only moving around on a macroscopic level. Even if "agents" have "learned" through evolution to "avoid" things, all this (evolution itself, agents´ learning processes, their acts of avoidance) could still be governed by laws of physics at the subatomic level.
yodabaggins 2 weeks ago
@AEFic i don't
SHIBBYiPANDA 5 days ago
Time is movement. That man said that the future is inevitable even if its deterministic or not but that is false statement in my opinion. What if all movement would stop in the universe, then time would stand still and there would never be no future. That means that there is a chance that the future will be indeterministic.
SuperTowlie1 3 months ago
Everyone - incompatibilist and compatibilist alike - can agree that a consequentialist concept of punishment is compatible with determinism.
The tricky thing is to show that 'retribution' is compatible with determinism. ONly if you can do that have you shown compatibilism to be true.
And Dennett doesn't do this.
Clear404 3 months ago
It is plausible that you can only have moral obligations if it is possible for you to do what you are obligated to do. A moral obligation to do something impossible is nonsensical.
Yet if, given the past and the laws of nature, there was no possibility of me making any other decision than the one I actually make, then I cannot have had any moral obligation to have made a different one.
Thus it seems that whatever I choose to do, I cannot violate a moral obligation. Moral nihilism.
Clear404 3 months ago
@Clear404|It's a ten minute video.He writes books and articles you know,in fact,he was scholar before the invention of youtube
henryporter101 3 months ago
@henryporter101 And your fucking point? I do kind of sort of know that he writes books and articles - twat. I'm addressing his position. You, on the other hand, have nothing whatever to say. So fuck off.
Clear404 3 months ago
@Clear404 Well go and read one of his books if you know of their existence,you may find he's address the issue of morality.Or does reading a long book require too much concentration?
henryporter101 3 months ago
@henryporter101 Look, you little cunt smear, either address the points I make or don't.
Dennett, if you're at all fucking interested, takes a consequentialist approach to punishment.
Problem is that a conseequentialist approach to punishment doesn't presuppose free will.
What pressuposes free will is retribution.
If he really thinks that free will is compatible with determinism he must hold that retribution - the true 'desert' is compatible with determinism.
Clear404 3 months ago
@Clear404 Your 'free will' and sense of 'morality' went out the window because some guy, staying up late at night in Australia, posted a few comments.As for the concept of 'retribution',it's going to happen in this deterministic world as your comments illustrate.
henryporter101 3 months ago
@Clear404 Your sense of 'free will' and 'morality' went out the window because some guy in Australia posted a comment.Your comments show that retribution will just happen in a deterministic world.
henryporter101 3 months ago
@henryporter101 Er, what? Something isn't justified just because it happens. So, yeah, I'm bloody sure people will continue to hold one another retributively responsible even if determinism is true, but that does NOT show that the kind of free will needed to justify holding someone retributiely responsible is compatible with determinism.
Incompatiblism isn't the view that retribution will cease if determinism is true! It is a view about what is needed to 'justify' such practices.
Clear404 3 months ago
@Clear404 Natural selection doesn't care about epistemology-it doesn't need or care about 'justification'.I'm not sure what type of retribution you're talking about.Is it societal or personal or both?Societies and individuals seek retribution for all sorts of stupid reasons.If someone is amenable to moral education then they ought to be given a chance by society,but if they're not,they ought to kept out of society.A particular desire for retribution depends on a given individual's disposition.
henryporter101 3 months ago
@henryporter101 Once again, something isn't justified because it happens. Tell me all the stories you like about how and why people blame one another etc, doesn't make a dot of difference - you're missing the point.
The point is this - to be genuinely 'deserving' of punishment for one's misdeeds, one needs to have performed them freely. Agree?
Clear404 3 months ago
@Clear404 I agree that is the way most people think,but I don't believe we can act in any way that is 'free' in the naive sense of the word.I can't see how anyone is deserving of punishment.Some people need to be locked up and others need to be killed but I don't believe anyone 'deserves' punishment-gratuitous punishment that is.If type of punishment was devised to act as a deterrent to other potential perpetrators,then I believe it would be justified.The person being punished is unlucky.
henryporter101 3 months ago
@henryporter101 But then you admit that we do not have the kind of free will that would legitimise judgements of retributive justice.
That's the test. A compatibilist - and Dennett claims he is one - believes that free will is compatible with determinism. But one of the things free will does (or can in principle do) is make people appropriate targets of retribution.
Dennett says nothing about this. He just talks about a consequentialist approach. That's why his argument is poor.
Clear404 3 months ago
@Clear404 I'll state that that the concept of retributive justice is based of the faulty premise of 'free will'.For my part,I think Dennett is using the term 'free will' in a foolish way.He's not a determinist in the mechanistic sense because natural selection requires random events to occur.But this doesn't confer any free will on the Human animal:Ants avoid things as well.He's a compatibilist like Hume,'freedom' consists in not being in chains,which is not 'free will' in the common sense view.
henryporter101 3 months ago
@henryporter101 Even given free will, there is no reason that punishment is "deserved". Its clearly an evolutionary imperative that we have the feeling that people that do bad things "deserve" to be punished, thereby creating a deterrent.
alienzen 3 months ago
I do not think that Dennett defends 'compatibilism' at all well, actually - and I'm a compatibilist.
For what he doesn't really talk about is the elephant in the room - moral responsibility. That is to say, the idea that we can truly 'deserve' (in the retributive sense) punishment for our immoral actions, and indeed, that we can have moral obligations in the first place.
It is here that compatibilism faces MASSIVE difficulties. And he just plain ignores them. Yet they ARE the problem
Clear404 3 months ago
The fact that an agent can avoid something doesn't mean that the future was evitable. It's just that the avoiding that is done by the agent was inevitable. Show me that it wasn't.
ThisClownis2in1 4 months ago
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ThisClownis2in1 4 months ago
is dennet arguing that we are limited to perceiving a world of free will, but the possiblity of the existence of omniscient entity necessarily means that we actually exist in a deterministic world? if this is the case, then the arguement can never be defeated or proven
sleeplessmind 4 months ago
I could really do with some help here guys on this matter. What I want to know is if there is no free will and I myself is not making any choice what so ever then how come I choose for example to decide to meet my friend later this evening ? so bloody confusion all this.
koda215 4 months ago
@koda215 A decision or 'choice' is a mental event that terminates a process of deliberation. Determinism is not the thesis that such processes do not happen. Thus there is no item in your experience of decision making that is strictly speaking 'incompatible' with the deterministic thesis. You chose to meet your friend after weighting the alternatives. But that mental process was a series of mental events, all of which were determined to happen given the past and the laws of nature.
Clear404 3 months ago
@koda215 The interesting question is whether the deterministic picture of decision-making is compatible with our 'idea' of free will. It is certainly compatible with our experience of decision-making. But perhaps not with our idea of what free will must involve.
Our common sense conception of free will is that it involves having alternative possibilties and that these must be directly available to the deliberator in a way that only indeterminism can provide.
Clear404 3 months ago
Dennett's view is that every variety of free will 'worth wanting' is compatible with determinism. The problem is that a significant kind - the kind needed to make us truly deserving of blame and praise for our deeds - is absent. Of course, it is probably absent if indeterminism is true too, and may actually be incoherent. But that doesn't alter the fact that compatibilist free will just 'aint up to making us responsible.
Clear404 4 months ago
Try to only focus on what parameters apply to our particular ecosystem.Then check how it matters to our personal contexts.personal is you and others like you. Ever overestimate the value your argument? What certainty do you have that an underestimation is any better? A real mistake is to think the ecosystem is centralized according to our judgments.It all began with a violent "bang". Lifelessness and an absence of agents is to our advantage because we can know it.
sharewndws 4 months ago
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Mental masturbation. What's the point? Determinism, nondeterminism; randomness.... STOP! You're both right. Mop N' Glow is both a floor polish and a dessert topping! There's no correct answer. There's no incorrect answer. Just opinions, and perspectives. Very human. This exercise of futile cogitation requires 15 pounds of very insufficient, very human gray matter. ...and a sense of humor over a glitch in reasoning.
mouthyweasel 4 months ago
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mouthyweasel 4 months ago
For all simple minded people, this guy's life's work is summed up at 9:30 through
9:38
I agree with him on his claim and i also agree with him on that a underteministic world does mean more free will for the individual just cause something is undertemined.
PurePower025 4 months ago
@PurePower025 I watched other lectures from him and he is saying determinism does not effect moral philosophy, because random does not make people accountable. I agree with this. From a mathematical abstraction standpoint, the two are not compatible. In other videos, he makes this clear, so i agree with him. What he seems to be saying in this video however, is objectively wrong.
bryanpicchiottino 4 months ago
as long as you can not find something that is truely random, everything could be predicted. and there fore you can not have free will. ether way you could not feel the difference. but if you where to turn time back to the start of humanity. every single event would turn out exactly like it has. without free will !!!!
towldryer 4 months ago
@towldryer Lol @ the start of humanity. I doubt there was a specific point in time where suddenly there were humans ;p
Jort007 4 months ago
does someone have the script of this conversation? the movie script, if you know what I mean.
blackleejack 5 months ago
Determinism = Given some start conditions and rules for the system, each state in time will be predetermined by causality. In other words, nothing in that system can "avoid" any predetermined states, because the avoidance is already built in to the rules of that system. Really don't get what he doesn't understand about that. His argument is that we will be able to read future states and thus change them. That's free will. The two arguments are not compatible, no matter how long he rambles on.
bryanpicchiottino 5 months ago 11
@bryanpicchiottino Let's say we built a machine that sees in the future. Would we have free will then, if we can alter the future based on what we see in it? I don't think so, because the construction of the machine was predetermined. So if we were to change the future, we would only change it so many times that our predetermined nature would allow us to.
SoundwaveRomania 5 months ago
@SoundwaveRomania Anything within a system is built into the rules of a given system. It is impossible to place a determinism machine that determines the future of a system if it is inside that system. Rather, only if it is outside the system and does not interact with the system. You can simulate all this with a computer program.
bryanpicchiottino 5 months ago
@SoundwaveRomania Right on! But I honestly don't believe there ever will be a machine like that :3
Jort007 4 months ago
@bryanpicchiottino You're assuming that the system(s) are linked indefinitely. Yet you're forgetting that time can be countered (based on our current laws of physics). So it is entirely possible that there is no "one" system and instead several, in addition, these systems are not linked. So if we were then able to counter time and travel from one system to another, we would have then ultimately broken the rule of determinism.
Exofluke 4 months ago 4
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bryanpicchiottino 4 months ago
@Exofluke If we could travel from one closed system to another, neither is closed.. Your argument is invalid. Two "sets" of determined causes/reactions are still determined.. If they interact they are not closed. If they cant interact and are closed, you just have two "sets" of determined systems.
pappapaps 3 months ago
@pappapaps Determinism boils down to being ultimate control and predictability, basically. Now if we had ever broken that control by becoming unpredictable, like the idea of countering time and traveling from one system to another, then we've still got a lot of learning to do. Point is, time shouldn't be voided so easily.
Exofluke 3 months ago
@Exofluke If we countered time then time is something else than what we see it to be. If we could counter time or travel from one system to another its still predictable. We can only talk about being unpredictable. We cannot do it. That would be like magic and magic does not exist. So its only a thought to be unpredictable. If the possibility is there, then you can do it, and then we could analyze how you got the point of doing it, which would once again proof that it was predictable.
pappapaps 3 months ago
@pappapaps Time can be "countered" (I should use that loosely) by traveling at the speed of light. That's something you can easily pick up just by watching the science channel. =3 Basically it's possible to travel into the future, but not the past. Traveling in the past creates a paradox. Point is, if we could travel into the future and do so between systems, then what? I'm not here to say that I do know the answer. I'm just saying that we don't have enough info.
Exofluke 3 months ago
@Exofluke I don´t want two debates at once, lets just say that we actually physically can counter time, AND travel between systems. If it is a possibility then it is not unpredictable. Please understand. The debate is not whether we can or not it is about, IF it is possible, it is predictable. So that argument is invalid in the Free will - Determinism debate. We can only imagine the THOUGHT of being unpredictable. Being unpredictable is unrealistic.
pappapaps 3 months ago
@pappapaps Determinism requires full predictability, not partial. If it's true, then everything is predictable, all at once and for every split second of time, however, that's the flaw. To be able to have and know all for every moment of time would suggest that time is absolute... which thanks to Einstein, we know otherwise. So if everything can't be known all at once, then there will be unpredictability and thus determinism is broken.
Exofluke 3 months ago
@Exofluke You are assuming that our current understand of laws of physics are correct, and that is not true. Further on, it doesnt break determinism at all.
Ko252 2 months ago
@Exofluke Yes, but we would have been determined to do it..
chucknorris136 1 month ago
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@bryanpicchiottino I could really do with some help here guys on this matter. What I want to know is if there is no free will and I myself is not making any choice what so ever then how come I choose for example to decide to meet my friend later this evening ? so confusion all this.
koda215 4 months ago
@bryanpicchiottino Not really, he phrased avoid differently it is the whole purpose is to not change the future but commit an action which results in an undesirable outcome that would otherwise happen not happening i.e. ducking when a stone hits you, really does avoid the outcome of being hit by the stone even though in a deterministic universe you would have ducked anyway, this is satisfactory to me their that their is free will.
Spieldamelenium 3 months ago
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@Spieldamelenium He said nothing that a half-way competent incompatibilist would disagree with.
He's not a real compatibilist. He says that he's a compatibilist. But the central issue is the kind of free will needed for moral responsiblity. And he says barely anything about moral responsibility.
ONly if he thinks full moral responsibility is compatible with determinism is he really a compatibilist.
Clear404 3 months ago
@bryanpicchiottino I completely agree with you. I just don't get it. If I try and punch you, you might duck or dodge. But whatever you choose to do, is it possible to have done otherwise? It's an illusion of choice which comes from the nature of language which perceives events as being causal and agents as having a choice. He does offer a good argument in the sense that it seems almost plausible, but a touch of scrutiny devours it.
jgonsalk 3 months ago
@bryanpicchiottino He surely agrees with you on the definition,but he understood that your definition of determinism is wrong, and perhaps unnecessary/dangerous for human kind. Because of your defintion of determinisms reduction of human abilities, and free will. His point is that, the free will that matters, is the one that evolves with avoiders, and they can avoid objects, ergo some things are evitable. Your definition of determinism is old school so to say :)
Roleren 1 month ago
Dennett could maybe be more explicit about the implications of what he is getting at; this is not a determinism which is compatible with a kind of 'magic' free will beyond or outside physical laws, but rather is compatible with the illusion of that will produced by the complex interplay of physical (determined) factors. What he is saying that we don't NEED the metaphysical free will because the mere illusion of free will is enough for our purposes (morality, responsibility).
HermitCrabbery 5 months ago
@HermitCrabbery Voila!
SciTechExplained 1 month ago
evitability is inevitable
joshuacharles78 5 months ago
I feel like the argument against free will is based on since people make decisions based on reason there is no free will. So to have free will people would have to be random and not have reason behind decisions?
matt4787 5 months ago
i hate interviewers who think we are here to listen to their gems of wisdom
hobaleo 5 months ago
This guy is a fucking retard. The whole fucking argument regards semantics. Making abso-fucking-lutely irrelevant distinctions between evitability and inevitability is fucking ignorant. The determinist position doesn't concern whether an agent can avoid a spear or not! The potential is undoubtedly there! But it would assert that the outcome was predetermined and therefore inevitable. He's rambling on about evitability and inevitability in completely the wrong context. Fuck sake.
Epsilon17Syn 5 months ago
@Epsilon17Syn I concur with you. I don't agree with determinism distinction that their isn't free will. Granted that can be an arguing over semantics but nonetheless but point I think should be made is regardless if I was always going to make a certain "choice" I am the catalyst of the "choice" made. My brain and mind were part of the cause and effect chain that made the choice and who I am as an person is because of my genetics/environment that I was pre-determined to be.
matt4787 5 months ago
@Epsilon17Syn Yeah, He was rambling too much about evitability and inevitability .Your comment made me laugh
avalanche1115 5 months ago
"Your choice is free, but I know what you're going to choose" is not a contradiction at all. If you're thirsty and I place a cup of water and a cup of ammonia in front of you, I know which one you'll choose, yet you have free will in choosing.
CommonAtheist 6 months ago
@CommonAtheist No, you don't. Obviously you take the glass of water because the other one is caustic.
SoundwaveRomania 5 months ago
@SoundwaveRomania Right, and I know which one you're going to choose even though you choose with your free will. I can predict your free will choice with 100% certainty, which means your choice is determined ahead of time.
CommonAtheist 5 months ago
@CommonAtheist But wouldn't you say you are influenced\determined to choose the water glass?
SoundwaveRomania 5 months ago
@SoundwaveRomania Yes, of course... yet you chose it freely. So it's both free will AND determinism, not free vs. determinism.
CommonAtheist 5 months ago
@CommonAtheist It doesn't make sense to me. Could you elaborate?
SoundwaveRomania 5 months ago
Daniel Dennett may be good at avoiding the question, but the real question is could have he chosen to not avoided it?
Keeban3 6 months ago
and EVEN if god EXISTS hes fukin USELESS because he doesn't help people... Those people who think god has miraculously healed them or some crazy shit are delusional. hes not gonna help u if he cant help someone starving, yet its absurd how many people pray to god and think hes changing their lives. They have no clue whats really going on
warLock21X 6 months ago
What the hell does he mean; "it makes no sense to say that the future is inevitable"?? It means that, in theory (given enough information, and the ability to process it), every event in the future can be predicted. I don't want to accuse Daniel Dennett of not understanding something so simple.. but then what does HE mean?
SubtleChaotic 6 months ago
This logic is nonsense. His examples still show that the resultants were inevitable, despite his label of evitable, because he does not reduce the actions to their base causal determinants, which is required to make these claims.
rolazrei 6 months ago
And if everything is determinism then what would even be the point of attempting to understand it? Would it make a difference? If you can make no choices then why bother doing anything? Determinism is a pointless philosophy. Twins can lead completely different lives despite near identical genetics and upbringing.
BlackScorpionSkull 7 months ago 2
@BlackScorpionSkull
Genes don't contain a program about each neuron firing, and twins are exposed to different influences. What a dumb, dumb comment.
twooffour 6 months ago
@BlackScorpionSkull
-Because you have no choice! x] Duh. Bo it wont make any difference, nothing CAN make ANY difference. THAT'S the philosophy! :P
Everybody knows it's wrong, and that we do have freewill. It's just that freewill is inconsistent with a lot of other beliefs that we hold, so we need to really look into the question. -The resolution will groundbreaking, whichever way it is.
SubtleChaotic 6 months ago
Did the agent choose to have the urge/capacity/desire to avoid certain future situations?
lgarvey 7 months ago
@lgarvey I agree. How does he know if choices themselves are not deterministic, the thought process itself to avoid dangers?
Kreature8888 7 months ago
in a indeterminist world, rocks fall.
the fall of the rock cannot be determined
therefore rocks have free will.
flyingturtle22 7 months ago
@flyingturtle22 A rock cannot assert it's self, unlike life.
HomuncuIus 7 months ago
@HomuncuIus
point being?
flyingturtle22 7 months ago
@flyingturtle22 The issue is much more complex that you think
HomuncuIus 7 months ago
@HomuncuIus besides illustrating that you're a pompous ass, what you're saying amounts to nothing.
before using a fallacious ad hominem argument, try to get your spelling correct, It'll avoid making you look stupid.
since you're unwilling to make your argument, I'll have to rip it from you, first, define "asserting itself" as related to life.
flyingturtle22 7 months ago
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HomuncuIus 7 months ago
@flyingturtle22 How about you do some reading instead of trying to extract the answers to life out of a youtube comment? If you're trying to entice an argument, insulting the other party is the wrong way to do it. When you compare life to a rock, you lose all arguments.
HomuncuIus 7 months ago
@HomuncuIus LOL
I'm not trying to extract the answer to life, but on the existence of free will.
you're the one who contradicted my argument, if you're not going to back up your statements then don't do them at all. I'm saying you're pompous moron because you are.
"When you compare life to a rock, you lose all arguments."
complete fallacious statement, this one is a non sequitur and a strawman argument (if you did some reading maybe you'd know this and avoid making so many logic mistakes).
flyingturtle22 7 months ago
Dennett takes so long to make his points. Predetermined is different from determined. Determined means that events have a cause. Events occur in nature and people in their interactions with the environment and each other. So events are not pre determined because there are elements that can't be calculated but this doesn't mean that all these things don't have a cause in some way. The cause may be random but it is still a cause but one that can't be calculated because it is random.
tyroy57 7 months ago
@tyroy57
ARE there any "random" events?? I mean, it's a nice concept for us when we don't understand the causes of certain things, and a lot of patterns are seemingly ~random~, but...
SubtleChaotic 6 months ago
@SubtleChaotic Good point, If they seem to be random and we have no access to the cause I can only assume so at this stage. Also some things are incalculable in any practical way especially future events.
tyroy57 5 months ago
every sperm is different, there determinism debunked. your telling me that god knew what sperm would be released and that specifically at a certain time you'd be born, that sounds insane.
warLock21X 7 months ago
@warLock21X
You don't understand at all..
Actually, YES, the idea does say that "God" (anyone/thing with enough information about the position of particles and energy throughout the universe, with the knowledge of all the physical laws etc, and an ability to process it all as a simulation) could indeed predict.. well not just you, but literally everything.
Insane? yes. True? maybe.
SubtleChaotic 6 months ago
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warLock21X 6 months ago
@SubtleChaotic im a sage u have no clue of the wisdom i possess. try suggesting moles are a sign of mentall illness then googling it to find out its true during the middle ages. makes these philsophers here look like clowns, u need a sophisticated mind for that to come to those kinds of connections
warLock21X 6 months ago
@warLock21X
... Don't ever talk to me again.
SubtleChaotic 6 months ago
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warLock21X 6 months ago
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warLock21X 6 months ago
@SubtleChaotic there is no god but man - aleister crowley. You're telling me god knew that a woman would be killed by a shark, that god put that shark there to be that woman's destiny. that just demented. how about the evils performed everyday random killing, torture, if i killed som1 would that be gods will to? see how insane this is its gets crazier and crazier
warLock21X 6 months ago
@warLock21X
No, you misunderstand. I'm not saying there IS a God (notice the quotation marks above??). I'm using him - as is commonly done - in a hypothetical sense. .. I don't think I should have to explain myself actually. Try work it out for yourself.
SubtleChaotic 6 months ago
@SubtleChaotic i was saying that determinism is false based on the example i gave. u said i was clueless but then said it was insane. what do i not have a clue about? just b/c ur saying it can be predetermined doesn't mean that i'm wrong and your right. the fact that u said it sounds insane means u understand exactly what im saying
warLock21X 6 months ago
@warLock21X
Please, I've asked you not to talk to me.
(can't help myself: you haven't offered anything to suggest determinism is false, all you've said is that it's kinda weird that if God knew what was going to happen that he do the things he supposedly does.. I don't believe in a God, ergo - irrelevant. I said you misunderstand, because you misunderstood me. I didn't say things CAN be predicted, I said that's what Determinism says - I was trying to help you understand.)
SubtleChaotic 6 months ago