Free Will Doesn't Matter

http://coffeeghost.net

On why the question of free will isn't as profoundly important as it is thought to be.

A transcript of this video is on my website here: http://tinyurl.com/3k6ymy
A transcript of that scene from Waking Life is here: http://tinyurl.com/3smtcn


My other videos and stuff at:
http://coffeeghost.net

Category:

People & Blogs

Tags:

• free
• will
• religion
• souls
• determinism
• philosophy
• albert
• albert10110

[dartplayer170]

Free Will very important!

How can you justly punish someone for improper ethical behaviour if they did not possess free will? This argument is at the heart of legal/ethical debates on punishment.

If I kill someone because it was oredetermined and I had no ability to choose not kill them, then how can you claim that I should be responsible for my actions???

[Albert10110]

We already have exceptions for people's crimes that they commit even if free will exists: insanity, youth, etc. There is no absolute yes/no easy answer for this.

What I say in my video is that even if determinism is true, we can't predict the future and our lives behave as though we have free will anyway. Whether or not it actually exists is effectively irrelevant.

Further, just because we think free will is very important to have is not evidence that it actually exists.

[mikeleifskramstad]

you are a lifeless person. if you believe in science, then is science a religion, or better yet you say that your an atheist. that you don't Believe in higher powers or whatever. but in the context that you start with contradicts your whole argument bud.

[Albert10110]

mikeleifskramstad: I disagree that science is a religion, and I go into this question directly with my video, "Is Atheism a Relgion?"

[nieuwsma2]

If you say that free will is inexistent, how does that disprove God/ a god?

[Albert10110]

It doesn't. That wasn't my direct intent, though "free will" is commonly espoused by Christianity.

I don't think it is possible to disprove God, as he's a concept that is fully malleable and not subject to logical refutation. There will always be some excuse why evidence against gods don't apply. See Carl Sagan's "dragon in m garage" argument.

[WigglesThePirate]

Your soul is chemicals and electricity in sections of your brain.

[GCthegreat1ify]

weigh pros and cons based on previous experiences and "decide" and act upon what to do next. Free Will in it's definition is irrelevant to any type of freedom. People need to get past linking the two together. Freedom exists but it isn't FREE from anything. you have a brain with a cerebrum that is uniquely yours that gives you freedom naturally! for fucks sake why doesn't the world end this feeble argument that's been going on for thousands of years. It just doesn't MATTER.

[GCthegreat1ify]

I think what people don't understand is that we have built in "free will". Our brains naturally weigh pros and cons of possible outcomes and we act according to it. Naturally. Free will makes no sense at all because a will cannot be free from processes in the brain obviously. I don't understand why people get so upset over this. Now INTELLIGENCE and the fact that we are able to understand and give meaning to things GREATLY enhances our "Free Will" and by free will I mean the brains capacity to

[MrGreeneggsnham]

Without free will you can't hold people morally accountable for their actions.

[ThisTroper1]

@WigglesThePirate derp

[futureslugger]

PS, beautiful explanation, I couldn't have said it better myself. They shoulda' used you as the guy that explains free-will in Waking Life.

[futureslugger]

I wouldn't say it doesn't 'matter'. Nothing 'matters'. What matters is up to us to create (or not create). If somebody is highly liberated by the idea of free-will, and uses it positively to further improve the quality of his/her life, well, let free-will matter to them. If somebody is believes the 'illusion' of free-will is a great coping mechanism for when they feel they haven't achieved a certain goal, I say let em!

Whether it matters or not isn't an issue. I think understanding the idea is.

[StarchaserXXI]

Neil DeGrasse Tyson once spoke about argument from ignorance. He said that if you don't understand something, you are not in the place to jump to any conclusion, instead, you should try and learn about it, to understand it. Once you stop questioning things and start jumping to conclusions, that is when you stop being a scientist. I'm not trying to argue the existence of god, for I am an Agnostic, I'm just trying to reiterate the lack of knowledge we have about such things.

[StarchaserXXI]

You can't say that a metaphysical realm absolutely does not exist. As you said in a previous video, you then possess the burden of proof. You can not prove that a metaphysical realm does not exist, for it is outside of our element as human beings. I'm not saying that there is a definite explanation as to the nature of this metaphysical realm, but you do have to take into account the possibility of one.

[bangzilla]

get new glasses, those are pretty out of date

[Creak86]

why not consider both freewill and determinism irrelevant? determinism relies upon the principle of causality, yet it's quite possible to refute causality. David Hume demonstrated that, although one event always precedes another, this does not prove that the first event necessarily causes the second. rather, a succession of events creates an expectation that the second event would happen after the first. yet this expectation is merely a belief or habit, not absolute proof.