Nice pile of BS trying unnecessarily (and ineptly) to defend present socio-economic structure by saying that determinism and free will are not incompatible. Understanding that free will is an illusion is not the end of morality (or world) but a new sane beginning.
Can there be free will in deterministic universe? Mr. Dennet said "yes" and declared he's going to prove it. But then he showed that this is not useful question to ask. I feel cheated!
@Cutufrum you can't get complete snapshot of the universe you're in. That would be like storing complete mirror copy of a HDD on to itself. So you cannot get into that paradox situation.
Mr. Dennet speaks of our "selves" being much larger than what we are conscious of...yet he writes books on how people are ignorant for thinking this way... so I'm really sort of mixed up as to what Mr.Dennet really even thinks is true..
TO ANYONE OUT THERE, PLEASE CORRECT ME IF I AM WRONG BUT:
If DETERMINiSM is true, then according to Laplace, when we take the snap shot of the universe, with the enough amount of knowledge the information to predict the future becomes available. SO HERE IS MY DILEMMA: If I took a look at the information to predict what I will be doing 5 seconds from now, then I can CHOOSE to change what was predicted and do something different.
@Cutufrum Yes. A person is an agent and/or a vessel of consciousness. It creates. I've actually predicted things people will say or do, and often finish sentences of other people before they finish thinking and speaking. It's just calculated thought. Because I can do that, based on very subtle movements, does that mean that it is deterministic? Don't think so, because there are areas outside of social trends or scripting which can produce results outside of predictability. Effort is key.
Maybe the future, the second you look in to it, all the information will break down into chaos. This would mean that there is no "future", yet!
Probabilitism!
Maybe consciousness is simply the act of being part of, and observing the change in this forever changing chaos. We only perceive the sum of the chaos as "now" and "not now". But the future is not yet ANYTHING.
@Cutufrum The 'Laplace's demon' thought experiment you are referring to is entirely hypothetical as there are far too many 'determining' factors in the world even for a 5 second prediction to occur (advocated by hard determinists) however I do believe Dennett is correct and Laplace never took into consideration the ability for evolutionary animals to avoid and therefore you will never be able to truely predict exactly what will happen in the next 5 seconds.
@StreetBoi69uk I disagree, following the thought experiment of 'Laplace's demon' it should also be able to predict the ability of these evolutionary animals to avoid and therefore predict exactly when a certain animal will show this behaviour of avoiding or not.
Do we have control over the causes of our decisions? I believe, that the phrase "free will" makes only sense in the meaning of "not to have to follow the will of another person".
Our brains calculate and weigh options against each other based on our knowledge and experience. (unconscious data included) and we will act according to what we think to be the best solution.
The two competing arguments of determinism and freewill are based on a flawed definition that is a tautology that the, "will can will as it wills". The will can neither will without being caused nor is it solely a conduit of the cause. Neither provide a satisfactory definition of the will. The will as it has come to mean to most people is different than the way it is used in philosophical arguments. Mental masturbation at best.
@MythicalManMonth Finding a part of the brain that is not bound to causality wouldn't account for free will. If something is not caused then it's not caused by the will. You've replaced determinacy with indeterminacy but neither allows free will in the sense that Fodor understands.
1. Modern science by it's very methodology can only conclude free-will as no more than illusion, more complex illusion doesn't lead to truth in or from any illusion in any case. Science limits itself to the 5 human senses as the only truth seeking tools for reality. Science accepts the evolution over time of these 5 senses as devolving as a 1st then 2nd, then 3rd & so on but in the same breath concludes that we experience our external world fully without the need for 6th or 7th sense. Cont>
@WILLTHEWGMAN "Science limits itself to the 5 human senses as the only truth seeking tools for reality." Not true, we use devices that detect things that we cannot (but ultimately they do deliver information via our senses).
That is still using our 5 human senses. Science doesn't uses our sense of self-awareness as an individual with free-will, culpability of actions, thoughts, memories & consciousness as evidence, lets say, of an immaterial soul. Science only gives credence to the five senses alone as the only human tools to empirically experience reality so it discounts over 50% of our human experience which includes our very own selves as mere biochemical illusory, thus, Who am I = illusion...
@WILLTHEWGMAN The problem with using our experience is that it's subjective and unable to be shared.
Imagine we say it's ok to use our experiences - someone comes to one conclusion, and somebody else comes to another conclusion - how can the difference be resolved? It can't. Can you verify that I have an immaterial soul? No. Things have to be able to be falsified if they are scientific.
@WILLTHEWGMAN My second point is, I can't remember anyone ever saying only 5 senses are usable scientifically - how did you conclude that? I'm sure any sense can be used, as long as it's used scientifically.
It's not that anyone ever said this, it's the fact that the method of science is only verifiable from only are 5 senses. Can you name a sixth human sense that is used in the method of science, if so what sense is that and how? Also, in what way could the method of science ever verify truth in human morality, consciousness and self-awareness as an individual with free-will? Science's limited methodology could only discount truth in all of these as mere biochemical illusory...
@WILLTHEWGMAN We could use sense of balance somehow I guess.
How can science verify truth in morality? Are you assuming there is a truth? As far as we can tell our behaviour and what we judge as right and wrong is determined by our genetics and our environment (including chance).
If our self-awareness as an individual with free-will, culpability & choice in our actions, morality. sense of justice and quality has no truth then you are a mere biochemical puppet simply reacting by pre biochemical determinism. If there is no outside source of "you" to choose/override one or another things of choice by "your own" free-will the biochemical reaction that wins over was from merely the stronger biochemical reactionary determinism of the two. Why do you debate?
I first find it absurd that you believe that all criminals had no culpability via free-will to choice in their crimes but if you yourself are a victim of crime you would surely want justice and find truth in the notion. Also that you believe that there should be equality for everyone but believe there is no truth or real bases for equality. I know there is truth in these things as well as morality, I can justify my beliefs and my free-will in choice is self-evident, can you?
@WILLTHEWGMAN It feels like I can make choices, but because of the nature of the universe I'm not convinced we have what you call free-will. That justifies my belief.
Yes if I were punished I would want justice. Being aware that I may be a 'biochemical puppet' doesn't mean I can stop being one.
Everyone has different ideas on what is right and wrong, how is there possibly 'truth' in any one persons conclusions?
@WILLTHEWGMAN There is a simple scientific way to prove that (first-class) free-will exists. Find a part of the brain that isn't bound to causality.
That part of the brain would perhaps make electrons appear or disappear - violating previously known physics and there would be a correlation to when the person is making choices.
@MythicalManMoth If that part of the brain "makes" electrons appear or disappear then it is that part of the brain that is determining the electron's existence.
@jasonthesage Yes...but you couldn't predict when the electrons would spawn or be destroyed and it would be determined by consciousness - not by any other force or matter i.e. violates causality (as we know it).
2. Cont> This is how science has become more about a world-view than a truth seeking method. Science's assumption that nothing exists beyond the reach of these 5 evolved human senses goes against the very notion that evolution has advancement and is continuing and at the same time this assumption posits that the evolution of humans is complete and was directed in such a way that humans must already experience our external world fully. Cont>
3. Cont> Our self-awareness as an individual with free-will, culpability and choice in our actions is so self-evident that scientists start to sound like philosophers to justify it. In a limited world-view that only gives credence to what is possible or natural via only our limitedly evolved 5 senses alone denies any possible truths in humanity, morality and ones self-awareness as an individual with free-will as no more than biochemical illusory. Cont>
4. Cont> Modern method science has become a dogmatic world-view that clings to only claims to natural causes that also puts itself in charge of defining the limits of what is natural within it's limited world-view. It ignores our very own human nature and consciousness as mere natural biochemical illusion. In this limited methodology science may be able to discover what we are but never truthfully inform us of who we are. Cont>
5. Cont> Our very self-awareness as an individual with free-will, culpability and choice in our actions and consciousness as humans could be itself a newly emerging human 6th sense and if we don't keep open the eyes of this 6th sense and stop letting the dogma of modern science claim us our very selves as delusional delusion, we will never find that reality in which we all know as self-evident and never get the chance to ask and answer, “who am I?”...
the assumption that a FINITE agent exists at 30.57 is where his argument goes off the rails. The idea of a finite agent sounds like 'cartesian dualism' to use Dennetts own terminology. Where's the scientific evidence that a finite agent exists .... where is the finite edge of you or me? The will is merely a useful belief of the similarly useful [from an evolutionary perspective] memetic selfplex.
I was working as a manager at 7-ll year after year after year. Every year I wonder what my future next year will be and then next year comes and I'm still working at 7-11 wonder what the future will bring the next year. yr after yr after yr. Then suddenly I quit 7-11, go to college get a masters and doctorate degree and became a professor. Did I change my future?????
This lecture is brilliant. Nether heard a better presentation of the compatibilist position. This is really the solution to a very very old philosophical problem. Thanks a lot for making this lecture public.
liquids are always found with containers......OMG LIQUIDS MUST BE CONTAINERS!!!! Minds are always found with brains....OMG MINDS MUST BE BRAINS!!!! Plants are always found in sunlight...OMG PLANTS MUST BE SUNLIGHT......
@lajungesombre I can easily demonstrate to you the difference between liquid and container, plant and sunlight. Can you demonstrate the difference between the mind and the brain? Show me one, and then the other, and how they are interrelated?
@npeffer i can touch a brain, i cannot touch a mind. i can hook up a brain to an eeg, but not a mind. a brain has chemicals, a mind does not. but lets take another example. two objects and the gravity between them. is gravity a material? or another example, is bouyancy a material? or another, is time material? is material existence the only existence?
@lajungesombre Material existence is the only existence that there is evidence of. All of the evidence we have points to time, gravity, and bouyancy being properties of materials, just as the mind is a property of the brain. That you can't touch or separately demonstrate a mind, just like you can't touch gravity or demonstrate it apart from its connection to matter, only serves as evidence that the mind is similar.
@npeffer Hmmm so you are saying that properties are either 1. material or 2. phenomenal (mental). #1 begs the question as to how gravity is material if it is not confinable to any one space, such as any other material like an atom. #2 begs the question by positing a 'phenomenal' space, in itself seemingly immaterial, as the space wherein gravity (and other properties) reside. To say that material existence is all there is is in itself a tough task to show, notwithstanding poppers method of proof
@lajungesombre I never said that properties are material or exist in a phenomenal space, just that material things have properties (and interactions which I would call phenomena). I don't really know what to call properties other than properties. How would you categorize them? I have also not said that material existence is all there is; I have only said that material existence is the only existence we have evidence for. The burden of proof is on the person claiming a new plane of existence.
@npeffer ah, but there it is....immaterial existence is NOT a new plane of existence. Immaterial existence, like 'properties', existed before we did. Before people there was still gravity. Immaterial existence is not visible in the same way material existence is, yet one sees it, since it is always with the objects of which they are properties and to which they relate. One 'looks' at immaterial existence, one 'sees' material existence.
@lajungesombre If you think the immaterial can exist without the material (unlike properties of matter), then I think it qualifies for a new plane of existence, no? Yes, before people there was gravity, but not before matter. What do you use to tell the difference between seeing the material and "looking at" the immaterial? You're simply making assertions without providing any reasoning or evidence. How do you know ANY of what you just said?
@npeffer My position is that the material and immaterial are ontologically bound, they never exist without the other. They are 'existentially' tied together forever. But they are not the same thing. Material and immaterial exist together, they are part of that very fabric of existence. I'm not asserting anything 'new' but rather trying to explain something quite old, namely the existence of invisible intangible existence such as gravity, beauty, the mind, &c.
@lajungesombre How you discern between what is simply a property or interaction of matter and what is an invisible, intangible existence? And again, if something is invisible and intangible, how could you possibly know that it exists? You're just saying things without providing any reason for them. You're trying to duck out of responsibility by saying it's the same "plane of existence," but you're still proposing something external to the evident existence and properties of matter.
@npeffer immaterial is intangible in the sense that oxygen is intangible. but, it is not intangible per se. we 'touch' it whenever he touch material. for example, we don't touch gravity when he bounce a basketball, and yet at every moment gravity is acting on that ball. the basketball as we know it is thoroughly 'coloured' by gravity. so by touching the ball we 'touch' gravity. in that sense, immaterial is tangible.
notice how the rejection of free will, meaning, and morality are peculiarly preoccupations of people who are privileged members of the post-colonial capitalist structure. I guess starvation isn't so damn relative when you are suffering it! Or perhaps freedom of will doesn't seem to be so negligible when someone is fighting occupation or invasion.
So we have "free will", in the morally relevant sense, because we've evolved the ability to consider a broader range of evitable "cans". And the extent of one's responsibility is directly correlated with the ability to apprehend more behavioral options than another agent? So, as you say at the end, a deterministic computer, making morally relevant decisions, and being sufficiently advanced, could possess free will. You make no ******* sense, sir.
@amw1978dc An accurate summary that you have written here, sir. It does make perfect sense, however, if you understand that this *free will* he is talking about is actually that *illusion of free will* that we have. As for the *free will* that you want, well, you don't have it, sorry.
@gsimard85 Oh, I don't want that "free will" either. I just don't get the intent of his argument. What are its implications? And how are we to refer to the more classical conception of "free will" now that he's hijacked it with his b.s.?
Well, firstly he's using this seminar to carefully take appart an alleged piece of 'policy'. I'm not even going to look to see if it's genuine. The approach is thoroughly inappropriate. He is a fraudster and if he is not he is making a mistake. Research this guy before listening to his bull! That he's using 'A Clockwork Orange' as an arguement is rather telling though - it's hardly an ideal, more an Orwellean scenario.
within the structure of language leading us to a point of digression. Moving away fronm any physical explanation of how trillions of robots become a soul to answering the question in terms of evolutionary theory. This amounted to little more than an argument that we have changed the world and thus...there must be free will. That's not really the question, the question is how does this 'soul' escape the determinism of its constituent parts.
@MrZallaz What you've posted seems to me to balk reason buddy, so unless it's a quote from something like Hitchikers I've got to ask what the fuck are you getting at?
Just flim-flam, frankly. If the lecture was meant to forge an understanding of how determinism and free-will are compatible then it failed miserably. I wondered if I had fallen asleep and missed some vital point , but upon checking realised I had not. He stats with an explanation of what determinism means. Determinism, of course, is a concept best understood in terms of physics. He then played around with terminology making, essentially, non-points, other than the ease of sublimation of meaning
This is a great talk. Gifted speaker and very intelligent guy, but I don't think there's been a resolution here. I ultimately felt like the guy at about 1:18:12
I couldn't find the meanings to the words he talked about: sheveled, mayed, etc. Apart from his examples, could someone please shed some light on the same- thanks!
Good Point Chibraxial, Dennet is assuming that because the decay of radioactive isotopes appears random to us at this time, that it must always appear so. There was a time when people believed that the rain could be brought about by dancing in prayer to a deity, now we know the rain is far less random than that of a deity's whim.
Only problem with your reasonning Mr Dennett, is that the randomness in quantum mechanics is attacked more and more as the subject of (an) hidden variable(s) may well be at work.
Read about Pilot Wave theory amongst other interesting theories.
I, personnaly, don't believe in randomness, at all.. meaning?
@chibraxial One problem with all those pilot waves and Bohm mechanics is that a) nobody ever observed those and b) that it does not comply with special relativity. It has to do all the explaining of standard QM but with the additional introduction of unobservable things. And the functioning of biological systems, which are macroscopic systems, quantum indeterminacy is irrelevant anyway.
sure it interacts, but not in a meaningful way. when im presented with a dilemma, quantum randomness couldnt possibly make it so that i, as an individual, could choose either way. your 'magic' comments make you sound like a fucking idiotic youtube commenter, oh wait, thats what you are, why am i talking to you? obviously that isnt what i meant.
Ok.... You personnaly make no choice. Every single one of your so called choices are directly influenced by everything that happened to you in your near or distant past. Every single thought and choice you make is only the result of what your parents' education and Life's education made you see things and on what seems good or bad for you etc... I'm sorry, but your personality is only the result of external incidents confronted by your most basics instincts to survive.
How can something that is happening everywhere, in your brain, your cells, the sun , black holes, plasma etc have no interaction (thus, constraints) with your mind? Is your mind somthing that is "out of the universe/reality" ? Our base instincts are programs "written" to follow the laws of physics in order to reproduce and perpetuate the species.... our very nature is imposed by physical laws, by the laws that the smallest forces and "particles" obey to.
@chibraxial i hope youre a rabbi or something otherwise you've no excuse for this question-with-a-question shit.
our base instincts follow laws of biology and psychology. the theory of evolution is not changed depending on which quantum model is used. the theory of evolution, the selfish gene, and the principles of psychology are evidence for humans lacking free will. what occurs on a subatomic level, which we understand little about, is not required to disprove free will.
@cteixeirax Have you been lucky enough to come to the conclusion that the term Free Will is a preposterous one?, having molested the minds of students and amateur philosophers for centuries. John Locke and others have clearly seen the flaws in this discussion, as have I, now. Do you agree that the two words should never have been cobbled together by evil and foolish people, to hobble innocent minds with a pointless debate?
@blacknganga yes, it is a ridiculous concept. i was thinking today that if our actions are determined by the type of person we are, we do not have free will, as we are not the cause of ourselves, we did not choose who we are. so if free will existed, actions would bear no relation to the person committing them. so you couldnt have good or bad people, only good or bad actions. something within the idea of free will suspends cause and effect in a way i cant understand.
@blacknganga i think its presupposed by most people until they question it. its a widespread belief similar but further-reaching than religion and even people who engage in philosophical debates make arguments predicated on its existence without thinking about it. i dont think that would ever change though.
@cteixeirax Yes, but my point specifically is that THE TERM ITSELF "free will" is a bogus term; one can see when one really thinks about it. When common folk think about such matters, what they really mean by this term "free will" is: "I am the master of my own destiny". This is rubbish talk, as Locke and others have pointed out. It is actually THE ENTIRE UNIVERSE that is responsible for our individual destiny, hence we are in a sort of marriage with what is outside of our own awareness,
@cteixeirax and together (we and the outside of our personal awareness) are responsible for the forging of our individual reality. To state "I am the master of my own reality" is simply to put on hold our current work/meditation and dive headfirst into ego aggrandizing twittishnes. No one escapes the tyranny of choice for long, and to prolong a choice is the ultimate act of procrastination, one needs to be either at work or meditating (a form of work). Ego ("free will") trips open the doors
the reason i say any of this is because you complicate things unnecessarily, and engage those who believe in free will on their own invalid terms.
and finally, before you make the same misunderstood point again, i understand that i exist on a chemical and physical level, and that quantum mechanics is an explanation of the latter, and that there is interaction. however you dont need to being quantum theories into it at all.
He doesn't answer the question about whether or not we have "free will", he simply goes into a roundabout way of explaining why the concept doesn't make sense. Imagine a maze drawn on a piece of paper. We enter the maze in one place, and the answer to the question is in the center of the maze. People complain because Dennett does not lead us through the maze to get to his answer. He simple erases the lines of the maze. He rejects the very premises of the question.
@Vincentaneous "He doesn't answer the question about whether or not we have "free will", he simply goes into a roundabout way of explaining why the concept doesn't make sense."
You didn't understand his lecture. Dennett is a compatibilist, and his lecture was about explaining the compatiblist definitions of "Freedom" and "will" and why the term "free will" as used in daily speech is a perfectly coherent and useful idea.
@Vincentaneous The problem with free will debates is that what you call "the premises" are in fact hotly disputed because certain interpretations(Libertarian/religious) of "free will" are flat out contradictions in terms. At the same time, we have unproblematic usages of "free will" that are used when we assign responsibility to people. Compatibilism makes sense of the latter, and Dennett is simply urging people to stop letting nonsense confuse them about the unproblematic usages of free will.
@Vincentaneous I suppose another way to state it is that he clarifies that determinism is irrelevant to whether or not it makes sense to assign responsibility to things.
Personally I was expecting more from his presentation - this presentation didn't certify at all that we have free will. I guess Dennett just wants to appeal to americans with philosophical populism.
Personally I was expecting more from his presentation - this presentation didn't certify at all that we have free will. I guess Dennett just wants to appeal to the americans with philosophical populism.
I can´t STAND this BS. At 00:37:38-something he starts talking about evolutionary theory being the "key", rather than physics... AS IF evolutionary theory somehow stood above physics... Does this guy understand anything about anything at all? Evolution does not stand in a relation to physics as being an alternate explanation of anything. It, like all other natural sciences, can completely be REDUCED to physics, making this "point" of Dennett´s meaningless as well... :(
@yodabaggins "It, like all other natural sciences, can completely be REDUCED to physics, making this "point" of Dennett´s meaningless as well."
It's not meaningless. He made the rather simple point that if you reduce everything to physics you won't understand shit because the description at the physical level becomes all trees and no forest. There's a reason we don't state traffic laws in terms of quantum mechanics. He's just saying that people are applying improper reductionism.
most of your life is spent doing stuff that sucks......school, work, bills, traffic, coworkers, standing in line, car problems....Once you get older you get married, have kids which means more stress , longer hours at work and less fun....
@5959512, hahaha.. you should read Emile Cioran. I fell in despair for two weeks when I read some of his work. I'm still in some despair, but mostly for ending my graduation project on architecture.. this months have been the death of everything
His argument doesn't hold, because he only looks on a macroscopic level. While avoidance might be avoided, the act of doing so IS unavoidable, if behavior only follows from the interactions of atoms and molecules that can only interact in one given way.
Even if they didn't only interact in one given way, that's still a far cry away from free will.
IF the pre-existing conditions where such that they would give the subject an incentive to "conciously avoid" the instinctive ducking, this course of events would be just as pre-determined as the instinctive ducking would be if the pre-existing conditions for "avoiding ducking" were not at hand.
Yes. He is a compatibilist - it's entirely immaterial to him that it's pre-determined. How you managed to not grasp this from his talk is simply impossible to fathom. The point he is making is that choices happen even in a deterministic reality. They are also part of the organism, and therefore should be attributed to the agent. It is impossible for an agent to be more free than when it is able to act out its own nature as it wants to.
He uses circular reasoning for God´s sake! And he makes some kind of bizarre language-based fallacy, utterly confusing himself by using the words "inevitable" (as in the inevitability of events in a determined universe), "unavoidable" and "avoidable" (as in avoiding the brick), and then drawing connections based on the words themselves rather than between what they refer to...total harum-scarum. WTF IS this??
@yodabaggins "He uses circular reasoning for God´s sake!"..."And he makes some kind of bizarre language-based fallacy,"
No. He is clearing up a bizarre language based fallacy that millions of people, including yourself apparently, are subscribing to. The inevitability of events in a determined universe are entirely unrelated to everything we care about with regards to freedom/responsibility. Much like we don't say "Humans are not free because they can't defy gravity".
@yodabaggins What we do care about with regards to freedom is that agents are able to sense their environment, make decisions based on their nature and the situation, and then act. We say they are free if the number of options were not unusually limited - above and beyond the laws of nature etc. It's within that context that any interesting discussion of freedom will take place, and it's *because* it is deterministic that it makes sense to assign responsibility at all.
so, if I got it right... what dennet said is that yes, there is determinism in a laplacian way, so technically no free will, but when it comes to morality the term "free will" is different from the previous sense, because we have to do with a variety of alternate situations and never the exact same one. Free will doesn't exist, but when morality kicks in, options arise and free will exists.
Before the last audience question the transition from motor proteins with no free will to a sum of cells with those proteins that possesses free will lacked proof or, anyway, support by facts. Just like the transition from quantum undeterminism to beings with free will lacks proof, apart from a logical argument that if A is characterized by undeterminism, so does B, which conists of A (ok, maybe that IS proof, but it lacks explenation of the limitations of that unditerminism).
Now it occured to me that it might not even be a matter of different definitons. Maybe, free will is only defined and makes sense in the situation when options arise and reality is never the exact same as it was in a very recent past. Humans live only in those situations and only in those should they use the term "free will". Otherwise, it's like using the word "water" in a situation where water has nothing to do with anything.
@Doppelgangergr I think Dennett is arguing against the Laplacian position which is why he says the answer to the problem lies in biology rather than physics.At any rate,that's my impression.
He merely constitutes that we're evolved beings with a capability of simulating possible scenarios. He did not even bother to explain what determines which scenario we ultimately decide to act upon. The chessprogram always decides a scenario in order to avoid check mate. Those are the rules. Our rules are ultimately set up by evolution. Hence, our choices are merely the result of inherited properties in conjunction with living in a surrounding. Con grats Dan! You have explained exactly nothing!
freedom is a condition for justice, which is a condition for efficiency.
Freedom IS the essence of what makes a person "good" or "evil"
those 2 terms are relative, so a person will simply live in accordance w/ their own practical integration of their understanding of good and evil for themseleves developing for what their culture is capable of enabling them to advance.
Why people are so concerned with the question of free will? From the theory of quantum electrodynamics, every phenomenon (but nuclear and radioactivity) is governed by electron/photon interactions. That's it. Our brains are no exceptions. Causality. No "magic entity that's doing the willing". It follows that the question "Do we have free will" can only be satisfied with the answer "no", and we should rather ask "Why do we think we have free will".
@unprofessionalvids We can't know any other reality that what we experience - I think that if it does not reflect reality we, cannot know - it is intrinsically unknowable, we can only describe the world in terms of what we are able to experience.
@WHOPULLEDMYFINGER i you really think that, then I don't think you've listened properly or thought through it carefully enough. Whether you agree or not, is a completely different thing but the fact that you're simply dismissing it as "dumb" suggests you haven't really understood Dennett's claim and therefore don't have sufficient grounds on which to form an opinion on that claim. Watch this video as many times as it takes, for you to really understand it, then post a comment about your opinion.
YOur life is based on your decisions Your decisions are based on your perspective, Your perspective is based on your personality, Your personality is in your prefrontal cortex, YOur brain is wired by your DNA, and your DNA is not your choice. If you are simply the result of your DNA and your life experiences, THEN it is all pretty automatic. THERE4, how do we have free will? Can anyone challenge my view?
When two people are doing the same thing does it mean that their will is not free? Think about it! The will of one is determined by the will of the other.Does that mean that free will is overriden here? Should we speak about free will or rather determinism? My understanding is that free will is determined will whenever there is unity between two beings. All the videos I have heard so far have devided these two. Love includes determinism as well as free will! Universe is determined and thus free!
i think compatibalism is a not true. surely not proven here. I acknowledge that free will is what we seem to have but i believe it is an illusion -but as we do seemingly have it we can act as though it is true - i dont particularly care for his ideas and thoughts on this subject but on most others i have found him tobe very insightful and good at communicating his insights
What a brilliant lecture by a philosopher who'll be remembered as long as there's civilization.For about a decade and a half I disagreed with Dennett,or rather,I didn't understand him.I've watched this lecture a few times and now I understand that the 'problem of free will' is a terminological problem.It's a great privilege to listen to Dennett so thanks for uploading this-it's one of the best videos I've seen on youtube.
For example, a dog is completely dependent on instinct. Image a dense forest on fire with 2 exits, one exit is not burning but leads deeper into more fiery woods. The other is burning but leads to safety. A dog cannot say "I must concede that one hazardous passing through fire, to get to safety." Its fear drives it through the 'safe' exit, to certain death. That evolved freedom from instincts is the highest free will we can get, so why reject it for an impossibility? I think that's his argument.
@Eligos616 I once taught a dog an abstract concept. It makes me reluctant to assume what we can and can't be sure a dog could (or couldn't) think... (I'm not so sure we've evolved beyond instinct, either, but I concede that the purpose of reasoning conciousness is to over ride inappropiate instincts...)
@ThePeaceableKingdom: Could you elaborate on that first statement? What abstract concept did you teach a dog? I think we're on the right track when it comes to overriding instinct. While our choices are always necessarily based on antecedent events, we are 'more free' in the sense that we have more choices than a dog, as I tried to show with my example. Human reasoning allows to supersede basic instincts (sometimes) and choose other options. "True Freedom" is an ambiguous and impossible concept.
@Eligos616 Well, it will be controversial (obviously) because people's beliefs on the capabilities and nature of animal conciousness are held with a faith that borders on the religious, but I taught a dog the concept of "other" in the sense of "alternate" which he was able to apply in novel binary situations which he had never encountered before. He was an exceptional dog though, with a large vocabulary, and mastered every trick I could think of teaching him. I ran out before he did...
This lecture confused me as well, but I think I got the gist of it. He does concede in that there is no free will in the strict sense, because it's unreasonable. It's like saying 'are there absolute values, in the sense that they were build in by an omnipotent creator?', 'no, but there are universally good ideas, like don't murder family', 'oh, then I don't want it'. Is there 'real free will'? No, but there's 'elbow room' for a sort of free will, reserved for conscious creatures', 'oh, then...'
@Eligos616 Hi I just watched this, and will watch it again because I need to understand it further. The thing I take so far is that when makinga ''free will'' decision, there are a number of evitable events, and these will depend upon the actions of others which we cannot predict. If we were the only being on the planet, and all of nature was predictable, then it would be a different matter. However, events have 'caused' consequences and our brains only allow us to imperfectly predict them
Well, Dennett's answer to the last question really confused me. Because he basically said that yes - there is no way in which we could escape determinism, and Laplace was right in his demon problem, but then he makes a distinction between an "absolute" free will, and free will in a "morally relevant sense". Isn't that simply conceding the point that free will as such can be at best an illusion?
I keep thinking back to his examples and points here and getting more understanding of what he was really getting at, I thought I had it at first! lol
His basic argument is that because we have more ability, we have free will... He insists that his argument is epic long enough to construct a maze of choice-assuming words, then hides behind the differences in action as a cover for whether or not that action is determined. The question of choice is whether or not a person's actions are evitable, not if the course of less complex determinism is evitable by more complex determinism... Compatiblism is, in quality of argument, a theistic scientist..
Can't think of a good verb for getting the good?? "Catchability"? LMAO, How about achieve, exemplify, promote, perform, elect or actualize... *facepalm* honorary degree indeed...
@tomkingsbridge The notion of evitability he presents could simply be boiled down to saying that "free will" describes a state where a person's determined action is determined free of other people's actions. In the simplest form it would be "free will is self-determinism"... the notion that despite being determined, in ignorance we assume that every man is an everyman and is judged against what a man of moral standard does. But instead he chooses to make up the word "evitable" and jerk himself..
@enotdetcelfer Yeah, I agree. He didn't quite convince me either. It would have been wiser to say, for example, the the illusion of free will may be free will itself, or smth similar. But I think it's pretty clear he is a determinist, anyway. His idea about avoidability probably didn't convince anyone in the audience either - and I would say that his argument is rather trivial for a mind like his.
physics is the right science to look at. If the parts have no freedom and have one possible future, the whole also only has one possible future and does not have free will. He makes a philosophical error thinking the whole can aggregate this property.
37:37 haha someone's not captivated
Nemesis000000 2 days ago
@Nemesis000000 Ha ha she is falling asleep
9numbers 1 day ago
Nice pile of BS trying unnecessarily (and ineptly) to defend present socio-economic structure by saying that determinism and free will are not incompatible. Understanding that free will is an illusion is not the end of morality (or world) but a new sane beginning.
Introductory clown was marvelous.
MarkoKraguljac 4 days ago
this is a silly argument about semantics with ZERO grounding in practicality... I'm going back to the atheist debates!
85jacob85 6 days ago
@85jacob85 It has MASSIVE practical implications for our legal justice system
Nemesis000000 2 days ago
32:00 i welcome the good. and avoid the bad. just something i personally like to do
Diosukekun 6 days ago
hi ho, this is kermit the frog
stankalmighty 2 weeks ago
isnt to seek the opposite of avoid?
Zenithteal 1 month ago
@Zenithteal The opposite of avoid is to "not avoid". "Seek" doesn't actually negate "avoid".... I hate the American educational system.
IndubitablyMe1988 2 weeks ago
@ 37:37. SLEEPY SLEEPY.
coleus 1 month ago
Can there be free will in deterministic universe? Mr. Dennet said "yes" and declared he's going to prove it. But then he showed that this is not useful question to ask. I feel cheated!
@Cutufrum you can't get complete snapshot of the universe you're in. That would be like storing complete mirror copy of a HDD on to itself. So you cannot get into that paradox situation.
cuu508 1 month ago
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KenMacMillan 2 months ago
I suggest "realize" as the oppositely charged word for "avoid".
bnightm 2 months ago
Mr. Dennet speaks of our "selves" being much larger than what we are conscious of...yet he writes books on how people are ignorant for thinking this way... so I'm really sort of mixed up as to what Mr.Dennet really even thinks is true..
GCthegreat1ify 3 months ago
TO ANYONE OUT THERE, PLEASE CORRECT ME IF I AM WRONG BUT:
If DETERMINiSM is true, then according to Laplace, when we take the snap shot of the universe, with the enough amount of knowledge the information to predict the future becomes available. SO HERE IS MY DILEMMA: If I took a look at the information to predict what I will be doing 5 seconds from now, then I can CHOOSE to change what was predicted and do something different.
Cutufrum 3 months ago
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thomaskurian89 3 months ago
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thomaskurian89 3 months ago
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@Cutufrum That would only prove your prediction wrong.
thomaskurian89 3 months ago
@Cutufrum Yes. A person is an agent and/or a vessel of consciousness. It creates. I've actually predicted things people will say or do, and often finish sentences of other people before they finish thinking and speaking. It's just calculated thought. Because I can do that, based on very subtle movements, does that mean that it is deterministic? Don't think so, because there are areas outside of social trends or scripting which can produce results outside of predictability. Effort is key.
skasaveszero 3 months ago
@Cutufrum
The prediction that you made about the future was wrong...
If you had a true "snap shot" then it would take into account your wanting to create a different future.
I think...
ZeroKelvin 2 months ago
@Cutufrum
This is a really good point, we need to ask Mr Dennet this question!
mapleleaf771 2 months ago
@Cutufrum Thats a really good question!
Maybe the future, the second you look in to it, all the information will break down into chaos. This would mean that there is no "future", yet!
Probabilitism!
Maybe consciousness is simply the act of being part of, and observing the change in this forever changing chaos. We only perceive the sum of the chaos as "now" and "not now". But the future is not yet ANYTHING.
Everyone, please give feedback ;)
pinnegubbe 2 months ago
@Cutufrum The 'Laplace's demon' thought experiment you are referring to is entirely hypothetical as there are far too many 'determining' factors in the world even for a 5 second prediction to occur (advocated by hard determinists) however I do believe Dennett is correct and Laplace never took into consideration the ability for evolutionary animals to avoid and therefore you will never be able to truely predict exactly what will happen in the next 5 seconds.
StreetBoi69uk 2 weeks ago
@StreetBoi69uk I disagree, following the thought experiment of 'Laplace's demon' it should also be able to predict the ability of these evolutionary animals to avoid and therefore predict exactly when a certain animal will show this behaviour of avoiding or not.
Patatmetmayo 1 week ago
Do we have control over the causes of our decisions? I believe, that the phrase "free will" makes only sense in the meaning of "not to have to follow the will of another person".
Our brains calculate and weigh options against each other based on our knowledge and experience. (unconscious data included) and we will act according to what we think to be the best solution.
flamifer1 3 months ago
The two competing arguments of determinism and freewill are based on a flawed definition that is a tautology that the, "will can will as it wills". The will can neither will without being caused nor is it solely a conduit of the cause. Neither provide a satisfactory definition of the will. The will as it has come to mean to most people is different than the way it is used in philosophical arguments. Mental masturbation at best.
visionary800 3 months ago
Incur, opposite of avoid.
inkstersco 4 months ago
@MythicalManMonth Finding a part of the brain that is not bound to causality wouldn't account for free will. If something is not caused then it's not caused by the will. You've replaced determinacy with indeterminacy but neither allows free will in the sense that Fodor understands.
digitig 4 months ago
A bearded deluded propagandizer. That the system turns someone into a 'legend' is typically a very bad sign.
Bullshit, soulless, spiritless topic.
suddenlyitsobvious 4 months ago
@suddenlyitsobvious Does he ever mention Augustine with due credit?
Piccolo7126 3 months ago
He's a bearded legend.
Piccolo7126 4 months ago
Skip to 4:05 for the beginning of Dennett's lecture.
renragkrik 4 months ago
1. Modern science by it's very methodology can only conclude free-will as no more than illusion, more complex illusion doesn't lead to truth in or from any illusion in any case. Science limits itself to the 5 human senses as the only truth seeking tools for reality. Science accepts the evolution over time of these 5 senses as devolving as a 1st then 2nd, then 3rd & so on but in the same breath concludes that we experience our external world fully without the need for 6th or 7th sense. Cont>
WILLTHEWGMAN 5 months ago
@WILLTHEWGMAN "Science limits itself to the 5 human senses as the only truth seeking tools for reality." Not true, we use devices that detect things that we cannot (but ultimately they do deliver information via our senses).
MythicalManMoth 4 months ago
@MythicalManMoth
That is still using our 5 human senses. Science doesn't uses our sense of self-awareness as an individual with free-will, culpability of actions, thoughts, memories & consciousness as evidence, lets say, of an immaterial soul. Science only gives credence to the five senses alone as the only human tools to empirically experience reality so it discounts over 50% of our human experience which includes our very own selves as mere biochemical illusory, thus, Who am I = illusion...
WILLTHEWGMAN 4 months ago
@WILLTHEWGMAN The problem with using our experience is that it's subjective and unable to be shared.
Imagine we say it's ok to use our experiences - someone comes to one conclusion, and somebody else comes to another conclusion - how can the difference be resolved? It can't. Can you verify that I have an immaterial soul? No. Things have to be able to be falsified if they are scientific.
We should continue to study the brain.
MythicalManMoth 4 months ago
@WILLTHEWGMAN My second point is, I can't remember anyone ever saying only 5 senses are usable scientifically - how did you conclude that? I'm sure any sense can be used, as long as it's used scientifically.
MythicalManMoth 4 months ago
@MythicalManMoth
It's not that anyone ever said this, it's the fact that the method of science is only verifiable from only are 5 senses. Can you name a sixth human sense that is used in the method of science, if so what sense is that and how? Also, in what way could the method of science ever verify truth in human morality, consciousness and self-awareness as an individual with free-will? Science's limited methodology could only discount truth in all of these as mere biochemical illusory...
WILLTHEWGMAN 4 months ago
@WILLTHEWGMAN We could use sense of balance somehow I guess.
How can science verify truth in morality? Are you assuming there is a truth? As far as we can tell our behaviour and what we judge as right and wrong is determined by our genetics and our environment (including chance).
MythicalManMoth 4 months ago
@MythicalManMoth
If our self-awareness as an individual with free-will, culpability & choice in our actions, morality. sense of justice and quality has no truth then you are a mere biochemical puppet simply reacting by pre biochemical determinism. If there is no outside source of "you" to choose/override one or another things of choice by "your own" free-will the biochemical reaction that wins over was from merely the stronger biochemical reactionary determinism of the two. Why do you debate?
WILLTHEWGMAN 4 months ago
@WILLTHEWGMAN Why do I debate? I find this topic interesting I guess and I just enjoy debating things.
So we are biochemical puppets, I feel like you think this is somehow a problem.
MythicalManMoth 4 months ago
@MythicalManMoth
I first find it absurd that you believe that all criminals had no culpability via free-will to choice in their crimes but if you yourself are a victim of crime you would surely want justice and find truth in the notion. Also that you believe that there should be equality for everyone but believe there is no truth or real bases for equality. I know there is truth in these things as well as morality, I can justify my beliefs and my free-will in choice is self-evident, can you?
WILLTHEWGMAN 4 months ago
@WILLTHEWGMAN It feels like I can make choices, but because of the nature of the universe I'm not convinced we have what you call free-will. That justifies my belief.
Yes if I were punished I would want justice. Being aware that I may be a 'biochemical puppet' doesn't mean I can stop being one.
Everyone has different ideas on what is right and wrong, how is there possibly 'truth' in any one persons conclusions?
MythicalManMoth 4 months ago
@WILLTHEWGMAN There is a simple scientific way to prove that (first-class) free-will exists. Find a part of the brain that isn't bound to causality.
That part of the brain would perhaps make electrons appear or disappear - violating previously known physics and there would be a correlation to when the person is making choices.
MythicalManMoth 4 months ago
@MythicalManMoth If that part of the brain "makes" electrons appear or disappear then it is that part of the brain that is determining the electron's existence.
jasonthesage 4 months ago
@jasonthesage Yes...but you couldn't predict when the electrons would spawn or be destroyed and it would be determined by consciousness - not by any other force or matter i.e. violates causality (as we know it).
MythicalManMoth 4 months ago
2. Cont> This is how science has become more about a world-view than a truth seeking method. Science's assumption that nothing exists beyond the reach of these 5 evolved human senses goes against the very notion that evolution has advancement and is continuing and at the same time this assumption posits that the evolution of humans is complete and was directed in such a way that humans must already experience our external world fully. Cont>
WILLTHEWGMAN 5 months ago
3. Cont> Our self-awareness as an individual with free-will, culpability and choice in our actions is so self-evident that scientists start to sound like philosophers to justify it. In a limited world-view that only gives credence to what is possible or natural via only our limitedly evolved 5 senses alone denies any possible truths in humanity, morality and ones self-awareness as an individual with free-will as no more than biochemical illusory. Cont>
WILLTHEWGMAN 5 months ago
4. Cont> Modern method science has become a dogmatic world-view that clings to only claims to natural causes that also puts itself in charge of defining the limits of what is natural within it's limited world-view. It ignores our very own human nature and consciousness as mere natural biochemical illusion. In this limited methodology science may be able to discover what we are but never truthfully inform us of who we are. Cont>
WILLTHEWGMAN 5 months ago
5. Cont> Our very self-awareness as an individual with free-will, culpability and choice in our actions and consciousness as humans could be itself a newly emerging human 6th sense and if we don't keep open the eyes of this 6th sense and stop letting the dogma of modern science claim us our very selves as delusional delusion, we will never find that reality in which we all know as self-evident and never get the chance to ask and answer, “who am I?”...
WILLTHEWGMAN 5 months ago
the assumption that a FINITE agent exists at 30.57 is where his argument goes off the rails. The idea of a finite agent sounds like 'cartesian dualism' to use Dennetts own terminology. Where's the scientific evidence that a finite agent exists .... where is the finite edge of you or me? The will is merely a useful belief of the similarly useful [from an evolutionary perspective] memetic selfplex.
TheDungorm 5 months ago
I don't see how this proves anything.
SoundwaveRomania 5 months ago
I was working as a manager at 7-ll year after year after year. Every year I wonder what my future next year will be and then next year comes and I'm still working at 7-11 wonder what the future will bring the next year. yr after yr after yr. Then suddenly I quit 7-11, go to college get a masters and doctorate degree and became a professor. Did I change my future?????
thyneighbor 5 months ago
@thyneighbor Unless it was a random event there was a stimulus that made you change. Perhaps the stimulus was working for years in a 7-11.
obmitty1 5 months ago
This lecture is brilliant. Nether heard a better presentation of the compatibilist position. This is really the solution to a very very old philosophical problem. Thanks a lot for making this lecture public.
Konstruktivismus 5 months ago
Paintings are made up of atoms, therefore the nature of atoms explain paintins. LOL AHAHAHHA
lajungesombre 5 months ago
liquids are always found with containers......OMG LIQUIDS MUST BE CONTAINERS!!!! Minds are always found with brains....OMG MINDS MUST BE BRAINS!!!! Plants are always found in sunlight...OMG PLANTS MUST BE SUNLIGHT......
lajungesombre 5 months ago
@lajungesombre I can easily demonstrate to you the difference between liquid and container, plant and sunlight. Can you demonstrate the difference between the mind and the brain? Show me one, and then the other, and how they are interrelated?
npeffer 5 months ago
@npeffer i can touch a brain, i cannot touch a mind. i can hook up a brain to an eeg, but not a mind. a brain has chemicals, a mind does not. but lets take another example. two objects and the gravity between them. is gravity a material? or another example, is bouyancy a material? or another, is time material? is material existence the only existence?
lajungesombre 5 months ago
@lajungesombre Material existence is the only existence that there is evidence of. All of the evidence we have points to time, gravity, and bouyancy being properties of materials, just as the mind is a property of the brain. That you can't touch or separately demonstrate a mind, just like you can't touch gravity or demonstrate it apart from its connection to matter, only serves as evidence that the mind is similar.
npeffer 5 months ago
@npeffer Hmmm so you are saying that properties are either 1. material or 2. phenomenal (mental). #1 begs the question as to how gravity is material if it is not confinable to any one space, such as any other material like an atom. #2 begs the question by positing a 'phenomenal' space, in itself seemingly immaterial, as the space wherein gravity (and other properties) reside. To say that material existence is all there is is in itself a tough task to show, notwithstanding poppers method of proof
lajungesombre 5 months ago
@lajungesombre I never said that properties are material or exist in a phenomenal space, just that material things have properties (and interactions which I would call phenomena). I don't really know what to call properties other than properties. How would you categorize them? I have also not said that material existence is all there is; I have only said that material existence is the only existence we have evidence for. The burden of proof is on the person claiming a new plane of existence.
npeffer 5 months ago
@npeffer ah, but there it is....immaterial existence is NOT a new plane of existence. Immaterial existence, like 'properties', existed before we did. Before people there was still gravity. Immaterial existence is not visible in the same way material existence is, yet one sees it, since it is always with the objects of which they are properties and to which they relate. One 'looks' at immaterial existence, one 'sees' material existence.
lajungesombre 5 months ago
@lajungesombre If you think the immaterial can exist without the material (unlike properties of matter), then I think it qualifies for a new plane of existence, no? Yes, before people there was gravity, but not before matter. What do you use to tell the difference between seeing the material and "looking at" the immaterial? You're simply making assertions without providing any reasoning or evidence. How do you know ANY of what you just said?
npeffer 5 months ago
@npeffer My position is that the material and immaterial are ontologically bound, they never exist without the other. They are 'existentially' tied together forever. But they are not the same thing. Material and immaterial exist together, they are part of that very fabric of existence. I'm not asserting anything 'new' but rather trying to explain something quite old, namely the existence of invisible intangible existence such as gravity, beauty, the mind, &c.
lajungesombre 5 months ago
@lajungesombre How you discern between what is simply a property or interaction of matter and what is an invisible, intangible existence? And again, if something is invisible and intangible, how could you possibly know that it exists? You're just saying things without providing any reason for them. You're trying to duck out of responsibility by saying it's the same "plane of existence," but you're still proposing something external to the evident existence and properties of matter.
npeffer 5 months ago
@npeffer immaterial is intangible in the sense that oxygen is intangible. but, it is not intangible per se. we 'touch' it whenever he touch material. for example, we don't touch gravity when he bounce a basketball, and yet at every moment gravity is acting on that ball. the basketball as we know it is thoroughly 'coloured' by gravity. so by touching the ball we 'touch' gravity. in that sense, immaterial is tangible.
lajungesombre 5 months ago
notice how the rejection of free will, meaning, and morality are peculiarly preoccupations of people who are privileged members of the post-colonial capitalist structure. I guess starvation isn't so damn relative when you are suffering it! Or perhaps freedom of will doesn't seem to be so negligible when someone is fighting occupation or invasion.
lajungesombre 5 months ago
It took a long time for him to say "Well, the illusion of free will is getting stronger at least".
Fetchdafish 5 months ago
We may have free will, but the girl at 37:35 is losing it pretty quickly.
Joeofiowa 5 months ago
So we have "free will", in the morally relevant sense, because we've evolved the ability to consider a broader range of evitable "cans". And the extent of one's responsibility is directly correlated with the ability to apprehend more behavioral options than another agent? So, as you say at the end, a deterministic computer, making morally relevant decisions, and being sufficiently advanced, could possess free will. You make no ******* sense, sir.
amw1978dc 6 months ago
@amw1978dc An accurate summary that you have written here, sir. It does make perfect sense, however, if you understand that this *free will* he is talking about is actually that *illusion of free will* that we have. As for the *free will* that you want, well, you don't have it, sorry.
gsimard85 6 months ago
@gsimard85 Oh, I don't want that "free will" either. I just don't get the intent of his argument. What are its implications? And how are we to refer to the more classical conception of "free will" now that he's hijacked it with his b.s.?
amw1978dc 6 months ago
,,,urregardkess,,
Pooknottin 6 months ago
'Irregardless' with the 'issue' of 'detreminism'.
What the fuck is with this vid? Is there a point to it?
Pooknottin 6 months ago
REALLY HAVE TO LEARN TO WAIT!
I'll hear him out.
Can't appologise more. Reminds me of too much of my foolish past.
Pooknottin 6 months ago
This man is a philospher and a reasonable man?
Well, firstly he's using this seminar to carefully take appart an alleged piece of 'policy'. I'm not even going to look to see if it's genuine. The approach is thoroughly inappropriate. He is a fraudster and if he is not he is making a mistake. Research this guy before listening to his bull! That he's using 'A Clockwork Orange' as an arguement is rather telling though - it's hardly an ideal, more an Orwellean scenario.
Pooknottin 6 months ago
what a hideous audience
OpiatedBliss 6 months ago
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OpiatedBliss 6 months ago in playlist subconscious
within the structure of language leading us to a point of digression. Moving away fronm any physical explanation of how trillions of robots become a soul to answering the question in terms of evolutionary theory. This amounted to little more than an argument that we have changed the world and thus...there must be free will. That's not really the question, the question is how does this 'soul' escape the determinism of its constituent parts.
MrZallaz 6 months ago
@MrZallaz What you've posted seems to me to balk reason buddy, so unless it's a quote from something like Hitchikers I've got to ask what the fuck are you getting at?
Pooknottin 6 months ago
Just flim-flam, frankly. If the lecture was meant to forge an understanding of how determinism and free-will are compatible then it failed miserably. I wondered if I had fallen asleep and missed some vital point , but upon checking realised I had not. He stats with an explanation of what determinism means. Determinism, of course, is a concept best understood in terms of physics. He then played around with terminology making, essentially, non-points, other than the ease of sublimation of meaning
MrZallaz 6 months ago
This is a great talk. Gifted speaker and very intelligent guy, but I don't think there's been a resolution here. I ultimately felt like the guy at about 1:18:12
STigg2011 7 months ago in playlist Philosophy
We're still going to go about our lives whether we have free will or not.
zarp29 7 months ago
I couldn't find the meanings to the words he talked about: sheveled, mayed, etc. Apart from his examples, could someone please shed some light on the same- thanks!
TheDtrane 7 months ago in playlist Talk / Lecture / Interview
I like the expressions on peoples faces, they are hilarious! -Let's not debate why.
TheDtrane 7 months ago in playlist Talk / Lecture / Interview
Talk begins at 3:37
nakomaru 7 months ago
Pursue? = the word...
YoungNubb 8 months ago
Good Point Chibraxial, Dennet is assuming that because the decay of radioactive isotopes appears random to us at this time, that it must always appear so. There was a time when people believed that the rain could be brought about by dancing in prayer to a deity, now we know the rain is far less random than that of a deity's whim.
munch2u 8 months ago
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LightShadowWarrior 8 months ago
Only problem with your reasonning Mr Dennett, is that the randomness in quantum mechanics is attacked more and more as the subject of (an) hidden variable(s) may well be at work.
Read about Pilot Wave theory amongst other interesting theories.
I, personnaly, don't believe in randomness, at all.. meaning?
No free will.
chibraxial 9 months ago
@chibraxial One problem with all those pilot waves and Bohm mechanics is that a) nobody ever observed those and b) that it does not comply with special relativity. It has to do all the explaining of standard QM but with the additional introduction of unobservable things. And the functioning of biological systems, which are macroscopic systems, quantum indeterminacy is irrelevant anyway.
TomFynn 8 months ago in playlist Daniel Dennett
@chibraxial It's still irrelevent, as what's happening on the level of particles has nothing to do with the choices made by humans.
cteixeirax 7 months ago
@cteixeirax
So, magically, what happens at lower scales doesn't interact with "normal" scale?
Yep, sounds like magic.
Interaction is everywhere.
chibraxial 7 months ago
@chibraxial
sure it interacts, but not in a meaningful way. when im presented with a dilemma, quantum randomness couldnt possibly make it so that i, as an individual, could choose either way. your 'magic' comments make you sound like a fucking idiotic youtube commenter, oh wait, thats what you are, why am i talking to you? obviously that isnt what i meant.
cteixeirax 7 months ago
@cteixeirax
Ok.... You personnaly make no choice. Every single one of your so called choices are directly influenced by everything that happened to you in your near or distant past. Every single thought and choice you make is only the result of what your parents' education and Life's education made you see things and on what seems good or bad for you etc... I'm sorry, but your personality is only the result of external incidents confronted by your most basics instincts to survive.
chibraxial 7 months ago
@chibraxial i agree entirely. now what does quantum mechanics have to do with any of that?
cteixeirax 7 months ago
@cteixeirax Let me ask you a question :
How can something that is happening everywhere, in your brain, your cells, the sun , black holes, plasma etc have no interaction (thus, constraints) with your mind? Is your mind somthing that is "out of the universe/reality" ? Our base instincts are programs "written" to follow the laws of physics in order to reproduce and perpetuate the species.... our very nature is imposed by physical laws, by the laws that the smallest forces and "particles" obey to.
chibraxial 7 months ago
@chibraxial i hope youre a rabbi or something otherwise you've no excuse for this question-with-a-question shit.
our base instincts follow laws of biology and psychology. the theory of evolution is not changed depending on which quantum model is used. the theory of evolution, the selfish gene, and the principles of psychology are evidence for humans lacking free will. what occurs on a subatomic level, which we understand little about, is not required to disprove free will.
cteixeirax 7 months ago
@cteixeirax Have you been lucky enough to come to the conclusion that the term Free Will is a preposterous one?, having molested the minds of students and amateur philosophers for centuries. John Locke and others have clearly seen the flaws in this discussion, as have I, now. Do you agree that the two words should never have been cobbled together by evil and foolish people, to hobble innocent minds with a pointless debate?
blacknganga 7 months ago
@blacknganga yes, it is a ridiculous concept. i was thinking today that if our actions are determined by the type of person we are, we do not have free will, as we are not the cause of ourselves, we did not choose who we are. so if free will existed, actions would bear no relation to the person committing them. so you couldnt have good or bad people, only good or bad actions. something within the idea of free will suspends cause and effect in a way i cant understand.
cteixeirax 7 months ago
@blacknganga i think its presupposed by most people until they question it. its a widespread belief similar but further-reaching than religion and even people who engage in philosophical debates make arguments predicated on its existence without thinking about it. i dont think that would ever change though.
cteixeirax 7 months ago
@cteixeirax Yes, but my point specifically is that THE TERM ITSELF "free will" is a bogus term; one can see when one really thinks about it. When common folk think about such matters, what they really mean by this term "free will" is: "I am the master of my own destiny". This is rubbish talk, as Locke and others have pointed out. It is actually THE ENTIRE UNIVERSE that is responsible for our individual destiny, hence we are in a sort of marriage with what is outside of our own awareness,
blacknganga 7 months ago
@cteixeirax and together (we and the outside of our personal awareness) are responsible for the forging of our individual reality. To state "I am the master of my own reality" is simply to put on hold our current work/meditation and dive headfirst into ego aggrandizing twittishnes. No one escapes the tyranny of choice for long, and to prolong a choice is the ultimate act of procrastination, one needs to be either at work or meditating (a form of work). Ego ("free will") trips open the doors
blacknganga 7 months ago
@chibraxial
the reason i say any of this is because you complicate things unnecessarily, and engage those who believe in free will on their own invalid terms.
and finally, before you make the same misunderstood point again, i understand that i exist on a chemical and physical level, and that quantum mechanics is an explanation of the latter, and that there is interaction. however you dont need to being quantum theories into it at all.
cteixeirax 7 months ago
@chibraxial the mere concept of a cohesion of molecules having free will is absurd anyway.
(Sorry for the triple comment)
cteixeirax 7 months ago
Has anyone considered that perhaps a super-natural intelligence is precedes and is preeminent over the physical?
No, I suppose that the essential quality of a Naturalist is to ASSUME that physics precedes and determines intelligence.
But it's only a silly ASSUMPTION from which logic and reason will afford no escape.
RomansGalatians 9 months ago
It's so funny how the audience doesn't give a fuck.
reafdaw01 9 months ago
He doesn't answer the question about whether or not we have "free will", he simply goes into a roundabout way of explaining why the concept doesn't make sense. Imagine a maze drawn on a piece of paper. We enter the maze in one place, and the answer to the question is in the center of the maze. People complain because Dennett does not lead us through the maze to get to his answer. He simple erases the lines of the maze. He rejects the very premises of the question.
Vincentaneous 9 months ago
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@Vincentaneous "He doesn't answer the question about whether or not we have "free will", he simply goes into a roundabout way of explaining why the concept doesn't make sense."
You didn't understand his lecture. Dennett is a compatibilist, and his lecture was about explaining the compatiblist definitions of "Freedom" and "will" and why the term "free will" as used in daily speech is a perfectly coherent and useful idea.
Gnomefro 9 months ago
@Vincentaneous The problem with free will debates is that what you call "the premises" are in fact hotly disputed because certain interpretations(Libertarian/religious) of "free will" are flat out contradictions in terms. At the same time, we have unproblematic usages of "free will" that are used when we assign responsibility to people. Compatibilism makes sense of the latter, and Dennett is simply urging people to stop letting nonsense confuse them about the unproblematic usages of free will.
Gnomefro 9 months ago
@Vincentaneous I suppose another way to state it is that he clarifies that determinism is irrelevant to whether or not it makes sense to assign responsibility to things.
Gnomefro 9 months ago
@Gnomefro Well said.
Vincentaneous 9 months ago
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Personally I was expecting more from his presentation - this presentation didn't certify at all that we have free will. I guess Dennett just wants to appeal to americans with philosophical populism.
Shaewaros 9 months ago
Personally I was expecting more from his presentation - this presentation didn't certify at all that we have free will. I guess Dennett just wants to appeal to the americans with philosophical populism.
Shaewaros 9 months ago
I can´t STAND this BS. At 00:37:38-something he starts talking about evolutionary theory being the "key", rather than physics... AS IF evolutionary theory somehow stood above physics... Does this guy understand anything about anything at all? Evolution does not stand in a relation to physics as being an alternate explanation of anything. It, like all other natural sciences, can completely be REDUCED to physics, making this "point" of Dennett´s meaningless as well... :(
yodabaggins 9 months ago
@yodabaggins "It, like all other natural sciences, can completely be REDUCED to physics, making this "point" of Dennett´s meaningless as well."
It's not meaningless. He made the rather simple point that if you reduce everything to physics you won't understand shit because the description at the physical level becomes all trees and no forest. There's a reason we don't state traffic laws in terms of quantum mechanics. He's just saying that people are applying improper reductionism.
Gnomefro 9 months ago
6:10 Zzzzzzzzz...
thepickletrain 10 months ago
life is suffering
most of your life is spent doing stuff that sucks......school, work, bills, traffic, coworkers, standing in line, car problems....Once you get older you get married, have kids which means more stress , longer hours at work and less fun....
5959512 10 months ago
@5959512, hahaha.. you should read Emile Cioran. I fell in despair for two weeks when I read some of his work. I'm still in some despair, but mostly for ending my graduation project on architecture.. this months have been the death of everything
oetamFCTC 9 months ago
Santa provides no answer to the question involved, but instead, seems to "avoid" it. I'm sorry I watched it.
disrachurchill 10 months ago
Stopped watching at 30:12
His argument doesn't hold, because he only looks on a macroscopic level. While avoidance might be avoided, the act of doing so IS unavoidable, if behavior only follows from the interactions of atoms and molecules that can only interact in one given way.
Even if they didn't only interact in one given way, that's still a far cry away from free will.
Can't believe someone like this made professor..
IntelligenceIsDead 10 months ago
@IntelligenceIsDead
I just paused the clip at about the same time as you stopped watching.
I was under the impression that this was a really bright and stringent thinker. It seems, though, that he is not. :(
The point he is trying to make with the flying brick example is itself based on a fallacy. :/
yodabaggins 9 months ago
@IntelligenceIsDead
IF the pre-existing conditions where such that they would give the subject an incentive to "conciously avoid" the instinctive ducking, this course of events would be just as pre-determined as the instinctive ducking would be if the pre-existing conditions for "avoiding ducking" were not at hand.
yodabaggins 9 months ago
@yodabaggins "IF the pre-existing conditions..."
Yes. He is a compatibilist - it's entirely immaterial to him that it's pre-determined. How you managed to not grasp this from his talk is simply impossible to fathom. The point he is making is that choices happen even in a deterministic reality. They are also part of the organism, and therefore should be attributed to the agent. It is impossible for an agent to be more free than when it is able to act out its own nature as it wants to.
Gnomefro 9 months ago
@IntelligenceIsDead
He uses circular reasoning for God´s sake! And he makes some kind of bizarre language-based fallacy, utterly confusing himself by using the words "inevitable" (as in the inevitability of events in a determined universe), "unavoidable" and "avoidable" (as in avoiding the brick), and then drawing connections based on the words themselves rather than between what they refer to...total harum-scarum. WTF IS this??
yodabaggins 9 months ago
@yodabaggins "He uses circular reasoning for God´s sake!"..."And he makes some kind of bizarre language-based fallacy,"
No. He is clearing up a bizarre language based fallacy that millions of people, including yourself apparently, are subscribing to. The inevitability of events in a determined universe are entirely unrelated to everything we care about with regards to freedom/responsibility. Much like we don't say "Humans are not free because they can't defy gravity".
Gnomefro 9 months ago
@yodabaggins What we do care about with regards to freedom is that agents are able to sense their environment, make decisions based on their nature and the situation, and then act. We say they are free if the number of options were not unusually limited - above and beyond the laws of nature etc. It's within that context that any interesting discussion of freedom will take place, and it's *because* it is deterministic that it makes sense to assign responsibility at all.
Gnomefro 9 months ago
just listen to some jacque fresco to recover your mind from the bullshit illness
Stillillgal 10 months ago
I was just listening to this in the background while I studied, but at about 54 minutes he said irregardless, disappointing.
mderucki 10 months ago
so, if I got it right... what dennet said is that yes, there is determinism in a laplacian way, so technically no free will, but when it comes to morality the term "free will" is different from the previous sense, because we have to do with a variety of alternate situations and never the exact same one. Free will doesn't exist, but when morality kicks in, options arise and free will exists.
So it was all a matter of definiton of the term?
Doppelgangergr 10 months ago
@Doppelgangergr
Before the last audience question the transition from motor proteins with no free will to a sum of cells with those proteins that possesses free will lacked proof or, anyway, support by facts. Just like the transition from quantum undeterminism to beings with free will lacks proof, apart from a logical argument that if A is characterized by undeterminism, so does B, which conists of A (ok, maybe that IS proof, but it lacks explenation of the limitations of that unditerminism).
Doppelgangergr 10 months ago
@Doppelgangergr
Now it occured to me that it might not even be a matter of different definitons. Maybe, free will is only defined and makes sense in the situation when options arise and reality is never the exact same as it was in a very recent past. Humans live only in those situations and only in those should they use the term "free will". Otherwise, it's like using the word "water" in a situation where water has nothing to do with anything.
Doppelgangergr 10 months ago
@Doppelgangergr I think Dennett is arguing against the Laplacian position which is why he says the answer to the problem lies in biology rather than physics.At any rate,that's my impression.
henryporter101 10 months ago
He merely constitutes that we're evolved beings with a capability of simulating possible scenarios. He did not even bother to explain what determines which scenario we ultimately decide to act upon. The chessprogram always decides a scenario in order to avoid check mate. Those are the rules. Our rules are ultimately set up by evolution. Hence, our choices are merely the result of inherited properties in conjunction with living in a surrounding. Con grats Dan! You have explained exactly nothing!
buugiman78 11 months ago
Winston Hall believes in free will, as does bunty.
winstonhallcomedy 11 months ago
freedom is a condition for justice, which is a condition for efficiency.
Freedom IS the essence of what makes a person "good" or "evil"
those 2 terms are relative, so a person will simply live in accordance w/ their own practical integration of their understanding of good and evil for themseleves developing for what their culture is capable of enabling them to advance.
katsumorymoto 11 months ago
Why people are so concerned with the question of free will? From the theory of quantum electrodynamics, every phenomenon (but nuclear and radioactivity) is governed by electron/photon interactions. That's it. Our brains are no exceptions. Causality. No "magic entity that's doing the willing". It follows that the question "Do we have free will" can only be satisfied with the answer "no", and we should rather ask "Why do we think we have free will".
waperboy 11 months ago
@waperboy So if your line of reasoning is governed by electron/photon interactions how can we know that it reflects reality
unprofessionalvids 11 months ago
@unprofessionalvids We can't know any other reality that what we experience - I think that if it does not reflect reality we, cannot know - it is intrinsically unknowable, we can only describe the world in terms of what we are able to experience.
waperboy 11 months ago
@waperboy
Excellent point. Does anyone discuss it anywhere?
soqueli427 10 months ago
this is dumb
WHOPULLEDMYFINGER 11 months ago
@WHOPULLEDMYFINGER i you really think that, then I don't think you've listened properly or thought through it carefully enough. Whether you agree or not, is a completely different thing but the fact that you're simply dismissing it as "dumb" suggests you haven't really understood Dennett's claim and therefore don't have sufficient grounds on which to form an opinion on that claim. Watch this video as many times as it takes, for you to really understand it, then post a comment about your opinion.
mrrem98 11 months ago
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chefshitpiece 11 months ago
When two people are doing the same thing does it mean that their will is not free? Think about it! The will of one is determined by the will of the other.Does that mean that free will is overriden here? Should we speak about free will or rather determinism? My understanding is that free will is determined will whenever there is unity between two beings. All the videos I have heard so far have devided these two. Love includes determinism as well as free will! Universe is determined and thus free!
clovek456 11 months ago
Why does the audience have such a mix of anger and boredom on their faces?
waitwhatwasthat 11 months ago
@waitwhatwasthat at 6:06 there's a guy asleep in the lower lefthand corner.
quidproquo2004 11 months ago
Take a look at the girl's eyes at 37:36 ....Hilarious!
jkross5ify 1 year ago
@jkross5ify haha!
suirammae 1 year ago
@jkross5ify Why didn't they edit that out? Maybe because she was determined not to fall asleep! (I'm keeping my day job)
waitwhatwasthat 11 months ago
i think compatibalism is a not true. surely not proven here. I acknowledge that free will is what we seem to have but i believe it is an illusion -but as we do seemingly have it we can act as though it is true - i dont particularly care for his ideas and thoughts on this subject but on most others i have found him tobe very insightful and good at communicating his insights
MrIzzyDizzy 1 year ago
What a brilliant lecture by a philosopher who'll be remembered as long as there's civilization.For about a decade and a half I disagreed with Dennett,or rather,I didn't understand him.I've watched this lecture a few times and now I understand that the 'problem of free will' is a terminological problem.It's a great privilege to listen to Dennett so thanks for uploading this-it's one of the best videos I've seen on youtube.
henryporter101 1 year ago
For example, a dog is completely dependent on instinct. Image a dense forest on fire with 2 exits, one exit is not burning but leads deeper into more fiery woods. The other is burning but leads to safety. A dog cannot say "I must concede that one hazardous passing through fire, to get to safety." Its fear drives it through the 'safe' exit, to certain death. That evolved freedom from instincts is the highest free will we can get, so why reject it for an impossibility? I think that's his argument.
Eligos616 1 year ago
@Eligos616 I once taught a dog an abstract concept. It makes me reluctant to assume what we can and can't be sure a dog could (or couldn't) think... (I'm not so sure we've evolved beyond instinct, either, but I concede that the purpose of reasoning conciousness is to over ride inappropiate instincts...)
ThePeaceableKingdom 1 year ago
@ThePeaceableKingdom: Could you elaborate on that first statement? What abstract concept did you teach a dog? I think we're on the right track when it comes to overriding instinct. While our choices are always necessarily based on antecedent events, we are 'more free' in the sense that we have more choices than a dog, as I tried to show with my example. Human reasoning allows to supersede basic instincts (sometimes) and choose other options. "True Freedom" is an ambiguous and impossible concept.
Eligos616 1 year ago
@Eligos616 Well, it will be controversial (obviously) because people's beliefs on the capabilities and nature of animal conciousness are held with a faith that borders on the religious, but I taught a dog the concept of "other" in the sense of "alternate" which he was able to apply in novel binary situations which he had never encountered before. He was an exceptional dog though, with a large vocabulary, and mastered every trick I could think of teaching him. I ran out before he did...
ThePeaceableKingdom 1 year ago
This lecture confused me as well, but I think I got the gist of it. He does concede in that there is no free will in the strict sense, because it's unreasonable. It's like saying 'are there absolute values, in the sense that they were build in by an omnipotent creator?', 'no, but there are universally good ideas, like don't murder family', 'oh, then I don't want it'. Is there 'real free will'? No, but there's 'elbow room' for a sort of free will, reserved for conscious creatures', 'oh, then...'
Eligos616 1 year ago
@Eligos616 Hi I just watched this, and will watch it again because I need to understand it further. The thing I take so far is that when makinga ''free will'' decision, there are a number of evitable events, and these will depend upon the actions of others which we cannot predict. If we were the only being on the planet, and all of nature was predictable, then it would be a different matter. However, events have 'caused' consequences and our brains only allow us to imperfectly predict them
asianlife53 1 year ago
Wow, that's an hour of my life I won't get back... Apart from some obvious mistakes on his part, I had trouble finding a red thread.
Well, I guess at least we can be sure that watching this was my only choice. (Assuming ...)
gonnabphd 1 year ago
Well, Dennett's answer to the last question really confused me. Because he basically said that yes - there is no way in which we could escape determinism, and Laplace was right in his demon problem, but then he makes a distinction between an "absolute" free will, and free will in a "morally relevant sense". Isn't that simply conceding the point that free will as such can be at best an illusion?
wgrygorczuk 1 year ago
@wgrygorczuk How do you mean?
tomkingsbridge 1 year ago
I keep thinking back to his examples and points here and getting more understanding of what he was really getting at, I thought I had it at first! lol
Roenazarrek 1 year ago
His basic argument is that because we have more ability, we have free will... He insists that his argument is epic long enough to construct a maze of choice-assuming words, then hides behind the differences in action as a cover for whether or not that action is determined. The question of choice is whether or not a person's actions are evitable, not if the course of less complex determinism is evitable by more complex determinism... Compatiblism is, in quality of argument, a theistic scientist..
enotdetcelfer 1 year ago
Can't think of a good verb for getting the good?? "Catchability"? LMAO, How about achieve, exemplify, promote, perform, elect or actualize... *facepalm* honorary degree indeed...
enotdetcelfer 1 year ago
@enotdetcelfer Are you serious?
tomkingsbridge 1 year ago
@tomkingsbridge The notion of evitability he presents could simply be boiled down to saying that "free will" describes a state where a person's determined action is determined free of other people's actions. In the simplest form it would be "free will is self-determinism"... the notion that despite being determined, in ignorance we assume that every man is an everyman and is judged against what a man of moral standard does. But instead he chooses to make up the word "evitable" and jerk himself..
enotdetcelfer 1 year ago
@enotdetcelfer Yeah, I agree. He didn't quite convince me either. It would have been wiser to say, for example, the the illusion of free will may be free will itself, or smth similar. But I think it's pretty clear he is a determinist, anyway. His idea about avoidability probably didn't convince anyone in the audience either - and I would say that his argument is rather trivial for a mind like his.
tomkingsbridge 1 year ago
How free will works: Orch-OR (Penrose's mind model) + the Quantum Zeno effect: watch?v=q9WVt44cvZg
JohananRaatz 1 year ago
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Daniel Dennet is a p-zombie! watch?v=ags_M3ILszo
JohananRaatz 1 year ago
physics is the right science to look at. If the parts have no freedom and have one possible future, the whole also only has one possible future and does not have free will. He makes a philosophical error thinking the whole can aggregate this property.