Chomsky on Humanism II (1/3)

Somewhere in this interview, Chomsky says there is currently not enough evidence to conclude whether we have free will or not. I recently asked him about the famous experiments conducted by Benjamin Libet in the 1980s, which have convinced many people that free will is a myth. Here is his answer:

I know of the experiments, but I don't think they bear on freedom of will. Rather, they bear on the interesting (but in this context marginal) question of the point within mental processing where decisions are reached. There is a widely believed dogma, articulated explicitly by prominent philosophers, that mental processes must be accessible to consciousness. The idea has never been given a coherent formulation, and there is no reason I know to take it seriously, other than the weight of tradition.

We can't answer the question now. Whether we ever will be able to is, of course, unknown. And there are also questions about what counts as an answer. We have long ago abandoned the hope of answering the questions about motion that were the primary concern of the modern scientific revolution, for example.

Part 2:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A4SbQftq8cU

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[t0kt0k]

2 minutes and 7 seconds before they stop talking about what they're going to about and actually let Noam speak. Why would that intro need to be longer than 10 seconds? Ugh.

[fede2]

aha. interesting. come to think of it, i read this text by stephen hawking in which he hypothezises about imaginary math to explain the origin of the universe. it's true, we asume that our grasp of reality is 100% accurate because that's what our minds have been telling us. we may be biased by our very nature! i'm just really blown away right now, lol.

[Diderooot]

re: Chomsky on Libet's experiment - Is Chomsky saying that there could be such a thing as "unconscious free-will"?

[JustMereArt]

@TheGodlessGuitarist

Chomsky isn't denying that our genes and environment have a role in determining our futures. I mean, he made his name by positing a universal grammar, which is purely shaped by our biology. All he's saying is that this doesn't rule out free will. It could be like 'movement', assuming free will exists for this analogy. We are free to move where we want - but this doesn't entail flying or walking through walls. We are still somewhat constrained by our biology and environment

[JustMereArt]

Does anybody know the name of the piece by Russell, which Chomsky references? I'd like to give it a read.

[fede2]

@icygood101 well, i'm not a scientist or an expert but i understand emergence as the interaction between certain molecules chemicals, etc. resulting in something new and differrent -i.e. the whole is greater than it's parts. it doesn't require an appeal to the supernatural, as far as i can tell.

the way i see it, if we are conscious, we are free. it doesn't matter if consciousness is ultimately determined.

that's the way i see it, anyway. as for QM, i know nothing about it.

[icygood101]

@fede2 Well, what explains it as something other than a series of ongoing physical reactions that bring about all our conscious experience? I currently don't know that it's certainly one option over the other, but isn't a kind of redefining that would make it compatible? From what I understand, most free-will and consciousness proponents tend to suggest the supernatural (silly). I'm not sure; perhaps quantum mechanics are at the bottom of this =] ?

[fede2]

i have a hyposesis regarding the whole free will vs. determinism debacle: if we define free will as the conscious determination of our actions it doesn't seem like much of a problem. from an emergentist perspective, which is a point of view commonly adopted among some cognitive scientists, consciousness can be understood as steming from the functionality of the brain. so we have a compatibalist approach.

[TheGodlessGuitarist]

@MaxwellGreene1

Sorry about that. Try this one: watch?v=jrCZYDm5D8M

Dan Dennett on Free Will and Determinism.

[MaxwellGreene1]

@TheGodlessGuitarist

Yo, it was a dead link.

[TheGodlessGuitarist]

@MaxwellGreene1

watch?v=5cSgVgrC

[TheGodlessGuitarist]

@MaxwellGreene1 I have read many such authors and scientists including Gould, Dawkins, Steve Jones, Charles Darwin, PZ Myers and bits of others.

Perhaps I have misunderstood the assumptions Chomsky is working with. I will watch again.