Has Neuroscience Debunked Free Will?: Response to Robert Sapolsky

In this episode of New Ideal, Mike Mazza responds to an episode of Neil deGrasse Tyson's StarTalk, in which neuroscientist Robert Sapolsky argues against the existence of free will.
Among the topics covered:
● The meaning and stakes of the free will debate;
● Why determinists are wrong to focus on atomistic choices about preferences:
● How free will is established philosophically and presupposed by science.
The podcast premiered on June 27, 2024.
0:00:00 Introduction
0:01:01 Importance of the free will debate
0:07:25 Atomistic choices about preferences
0:12:43 Establishing free will philosophically
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[@madlynx1818]

Of course we have free will. He can trim that beard any time he wants.

[@TeaParty1776]

He freely chooses hairyness.

[@kphaxx]

My brain changed when reading this

[@grantwithers]

yeah he's choosing the krazy wonk look

[@TeaParty1776]

@@kphaxx Yes, a good joke always excites my synapses.

[@alamagoddystyle]

I can die whenever I choose to. But “I”

[@edbonz2]

Great podcast. Thank you ARI & Dr MM. $

[@Mr.Witness]

This video was excellent and the format is awesome!

[@draco-amercon]

So the neurological equivalent of BF Skinner's beyond freedom and dignity.

[@Gorboduc]

Indeed. And I was hoping that they'd mention Rand's essay on Skinner called The Stimulus & The Response, but as so often on this channel the old gal's writings are... oddly ignored? Anyway it's a great essay: Chapter 13 in P:WNI.

[@exnihilonihilfit6316]

​@@GorboducThanks for that information.

[@stockfeeder666]

Thank you. I have been waiting for someone to challenge this ridiculous assertion. Looking forward to this.

[@-cc9ye]

Sounds like you formed a judgement without having an argument to support it.

[@stockfeeder666]

@@-cc9ye it's youtube, not harvard buddy. Relax

[@-cc9ye]

@@stockfeeder666 I was focused but now am not, thanks.

[@stockfeeder666]

@@-cc9ye sorry my comments ruined your day.

[@-cc9ye]

@@stockfeeder666 I'm easily distracted. Enjoy your day!

[@dinksmallwood5561]

According to determinism I have no control over wether or not I "choose" to treat other people better or worse based on their "choices". Christ Sapolskys statement in first clip is apparently and obvoiusly self-refuting.

[@GurniHallek]

Determinism in general is a laughably self-refuting thing. If you have no choice at all and all your actions are predetermined by outside forces from long-ago, then whatever statement you make about reality makes no more sense than rumbling of a boulder rolling downhill. Including statements about existence of free-will.

[@dinksmallwood5561]

@@GurniHallek Yeah as I wrote in another comment: Determinism is non-cognitivism in all issues. Nothing can be derived from it, no sense can be made of anything going on within our minds or withing the external world.

[@TheHerrUlf]

Indeed. Totally incoherent

[@kvitkakhorob7049]

ohh...I have been thinking for a while on this issue, thank you for raising a problem

[@jessewallace12able]

If there was no free will, you wouldn’t know about it. There would be no purpose, for being aware of the feeling of choice, for this mechanism to be selected for in evolution.

[@willnitschke]

irrelevant.

[@kmeisenbach1]

Great video. Thank you.

[@Wingedmagician]

I still agree with Robert Sapolsky but I got a lot of this

[@willnitschke]

'Cause feelings, right?

[@marvingourapa]

If you deny freewill, you are in essence saying the world is meaningless.

[@ltzmin]

Nothing changes but for the better. In what way the world is meaningless or how it has meaning with or without it?

[@TeaParty1776]

Irrelevant to whether free will is real or not

[@marvingourapa]

@@TeaParty1776 your comment is meaningless. Irrelevant. Its was predetermined. you are free to believe what you like.

[@marvingourapa]

@@ltzmin if you have no free will. you choose nothing

[@ltzmin]

@@marvingourapa So? Doesn't change anything, you still like things, have preferences and the Universe conspired to make it so. Knowing that you didn't make them so it's not a deal breaker. Who gives a 💩 if you are choosing or not?

[@JohnPaquette]

Excellent criticism. Very clear and well worded.

[@SneakySteevy]

Spinoza does thought about all of that in the 17th century.

[@tomkoziol141]

Lee Pierson and Monroe Trout. What is consciousness for? in New Ideas in Psychology 47 (2017)😎

[@TeaParty1776]

consciousness is the confusing time between naps -sign on philosohy professors door in local university

[@cb73]

There is something very weird that happens in conversions about free will especially arguments against it. It drives me insane because nobody ever addresses the elephant in the room. I’ll give you an example. In all of Sapolsky’s interviews he keeps using words to describe a kind of distaste he has for people who foolishly believe in freewill. He will congratulate himself and his guests for being the smart ones and judging others for not getting in line. It’s not out and out judgement he seems like a genuinely nice guy but he doesn’t address the fact that he is still making a kind of moral argument - moral arguments assume choice!!!!

[@-cc9ye]

He's not saying you don't have the ability to choose, he's saying you don't have any control over what you ultimately want to choose. You can pick A or B, but you don't know why you pick A or B.

[@willnitschke]

@@-cc9ye Nobody knows why they pick A or B, irrespective of whether there is free will or not.

[@-cc9ye]

@@willnitschke I agree, people generally don't know why. But they can be primed to pick one or the other, without their conscious knowledge. And then when asked why they picked what they picked, they would come up with some fabricated reason. So there is always a reason why, just because we don't have enough data to know what that is in day to day scenarios doesn't stop there being one.

[@BalugaWhale37]

In his book he admits that he does not know what consciousness is. He will later describe "learning" as something that sea slugs do. He insists that our minds we are no more complex than that. It's fascinating to watch someone use concepts and derive principles and then commit them to paper without ever identifying these actions as expressions of human thinking.

[@willnitschke]

@@-cc9ye I'm aware of that research. Most of the operations of our brain run on 'auto pilot'. This doesn't inform us on the so called 'free will' question.

[@dotbasing]

Great topic. But again, a brief "fundamental" answer needed. Eg AR would answer such a question in 3-4 lines I think..

[@TeaParty1776]

Complexity-worship rationalizes the evasion of mans power to focus or evade. The more complex, the more difficult to identify the rationalization.

[@dotbasing]

@@TeaParty1776 Also I feel ARI erring by going after fads such as long podcasts. Independent/creative approach needed. But anyways I feel most AR fans do not deserve her...

[@sdrc92126]

Never trust a person who believes that private enterprise will never achieve what governments have accomplished. Especially in their own "areas of expertise".

[@TeaParty1776]

what have govts accomplished? 300K yrs of poverty and war?

[@ronpitcher138]

@@TeaParty1776 If government didn't exist, DARPA would never have been created, the internet would not have been invented and we would not be having these conversations on KZbin right now. Of course you'd be correct that for every good the government has been responsible for, they likely created an equal amount of pain and suffering.

[@TeaParty1776]

@@ronpitcher138 Coincidences are not causes. The mind is the basic cause of production. Force is anti-mind.

[@allanshpeley4284]

@@ronpitcher138 That's a stretch to think we wouldn't have internet without the government. It was an obvious next step in communication. Of course it would have been done by private enterprise if it weren't for government.

[@ronpitcher138]

@@allanshpeley4284 Very possible you're right and it would have been invented eventually. How long would that have taken private entities to come up with internet tech? Who knows? The argument stands that there are many innovations that would not have been created WHEN they were and the world would not be the same TODAY without large efforts made by the government. I'm not saying the government is all good by any means but it's difficult to argue against the effectiveness of large organized groups of highly talented humans. Effective for good and bad.

[@micchaelsanders6286]

4:50

[@lebo3793]

Maturity and enlightenment increase choices, i.e., evolution

[@Esabreya]

Yes

[@palreason7761]

What is 'social Enlightenment ' ?

[@TeaParty1776]

A Hollywood party where the foxes smile at you

[@ltzmin]

The experience or non experience of mental control. The degrees in which they are experienced by anybody are within the possibilities of that machine. Why is it experiencing mental control to that degree or to that other degree or not at all? That's something the individual is, yet again, not responsible for but it's genes, environment, etc. etc.

[@dougpridgen9682]

Is a person responsible for whether they choose to engage a thought process to learn about genes, environment, and so on? If thinking or not isn’t a choice then there is no such thing as reasoning from evidence, no such thing as inference. How do you account for this contradiction in your view, since that would also apply to you and there is no such thing as a correct or incorrect view on determinism?

[@ltzmin]

@@dougpridgen9682 It is not* a contradiction. You almost had it. What kind of free will are you exerting when you understand 2 + 2 = 4? None. You are a prisoner of that understanding. There's no way to truly know 2 + 2 = 4 and free will your way out of that understanding. Whether you understand something or not it's not up to any sense of free will. Just like you can't stop a heartbeat, you cannot stop yourself from understanding something, or not understanding it or think you do but don't, and so on. Whatever conclusions with whichever means you reach, "you" didn't reach them, it follows exactly what your mind allowed to follow. A mind not constructed by you in any meaningful way.

[@ltzmin]

@@dougpridgen9682 No, a person is not responsible for choosing to engage a thought process to learn x, y or z.

[@dougpridgen9682]

@@ltzmin If your “argument” is true then you are just a meat machine making noises that don’t mean anything, so why should anyone find that convincing? Machines can only do what they are designed or programmed to do, which is why you don’t believe in responsibility. So if someone murders your loved ones in front of you, beats you unconscious, and loots your home, since they can’t help choosing irrationality and you have no control over what you think, there’s no reason for you to prefer shrugging and then eating a bowl of ice cream to contacting law enforcement and seeking justice. There is no such thing as justice, since nobody is responsible for anything they do. Of course you won’t admit this glaring contradiction because your view doesn’t even recognize contradiction as a thing, since thinking isn’t a thing. It’s just neurons and algorithms and consciousness is an illusion. Consequently there is no “you” arguing and no “me” to hear or consider your argument.

[@ltzmin]

@@dougpridgen9682 To the point of being "just machines", complex machines. Complex machines, we don't understand how a clump of millions of cells then are capable of studying themselves. There's no such thing as a comparison between a human being and any machine we can build, so far. So attacking that coparison by saying machines can't do what humans can is missing the mark. The point is determinism and the irrationality of blaming a washing machine from tearing your clothes and putting it in jail or beating it. Same way with the criminal example you described. You put them away, if you can't fix them so they don't hurt anybody else. Please explain how free will is causing you or not to care for your loved ones and their wellbeing. I don't believe anybody would eat a bowl of ice cream unless they are wired "wrong" that way, but again, did that person wired themselves to behave like you describe? We are not wired to behave that way. Also, I never argue againts thinking, I'm saying you have less control or none whatsoever about what you think, what you consider important versus not important. Finally to the point of accountability, try to behave in the way you describe, that nothing matters because at the end of the day it's not your fault/responsability and the next message you sent will be most likely from jail. "This guy on KZbin said we don't have free will so there's no personal responsability so I went and murder somebody" Behaving in such a way, much like the faulty washing machine, is harmful to you and towards others. And promptly put away. It's interesting that you seem to argue there'll be no consequences or that all of a sudden nothing matters, if not concerning.

[@LenSklogW]

It appears in my present state this BS is being forced on me by KZbin, my paired device has Hooverphonic ad Infintum 😊

[@hrearden6993]

Is it possible that man has free will in regards to sonethings but doesn't in regards to other things?

[@TeaParty1776]

He can focus his mind but not fly by flapping his arms.

[@TH3F4LC0Nx]

"5.134: From an elementary proposition no other can be inferred. 5.135: In no way can an inference be made from the existence of one state of affairs to the existence of another entirely different from it. 5.136: There is no causal nexus which justifies such an inference. 5.1361: The events of the future *cannot* be inferred from those of the present. Superstition is the belief in the causal nexus. 5.1362: The freedom of the will consists in the fact that future actions cannot be known now. We could only know them if causality were an *inner* necessity, like that of logical deduction." ---Ludwig Wittgenstein Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus

[@TeaParty1776]

> from the existence of one state of affairs to the existence of another entirely different from it. Everything exists,thus all similar.

[@TeaParty1776]

Witt rationalized the unfocused mind.

[@ltzmin]

Machines, complex machines. You can't blame or praise it for doing anything. However, if the machine is producing violent or negative behaviors towards itself or others, we either fix it or put it somewhere it can't hurt no more. How can this be any better thinking the machine is responsible or worth of praise? It's but our psychology that gets rewarded (or hurt) for thinking that way

[@TeaParty1776]

The content of your unfocused mind is noted.

[@ltzmin]

@@TeaParty1776 How so? Interesting to see my idea refuted if you can. Go on 🍿

[@sybo59]

@@ltzminThis was already addressed in the video. You’re making normative judgements, which make no sense under determinism.

[@ltzmin]

@@sybo59 the video says "we have free will because I chose to have it" I don't know how that makes any sense to anybody.

[@sybo59]

@@ltzmin No, that is not said in the video.

[@Americandragonrider333.]

You can’t take free will away. It’s a direct gift from God! It’s only manipulation from evil that makes you think you lose it! But in truth we always have a choice!

[@TeaParty1776]

God wants an empty, passive mind for mindless obedience.

[@unknowninfinium4353]

Submilimination leads to free will.

[@science212]

Free will is real.

[@no_sht_sherlock4663]

Choose to not believe in free will

[@Zuumville]

SAPOLSKY’S DEFINITION OF FREE WILL. Sapolsky was asked to define what he means by free will in some of his interviews. He said that one could prove free will if they showed him a neuron that does the same no matter what the past environmental or biological history, or what the rest of the brain does. A different but equivalent way of stating this is to show how we couldn’t have done anything different if we could go back in time. The brain has 82 billion neurons and which neurons are connected to any particular neuron, the strength and type of those connections, etc. is DETERMINED by past history. This changes continuously as new connections are made, some are deleted, others are strengthened or weakened as the brain continually makes new memories with each new experience we have. A neuron will fire if the sum total of the excitatory and inhibitory action potentials it receives from the hundreds of neurons connected to it exceed the firing threshold of the neuron. If a person goes back in time to the point where he chose chocolate ice cream, then he can only make a different choice if the choice comes from a part of the brain that is completely independent of the influence and past history of any or all of the other 82 billion neurons in the brain (for example, if we have a magical “soul”). You have to explain how specific (not random) neurons did something different this time when everything in the brain is exactly the same as it was before in the original timeline. If a neuron can fire or not fire totally independent of whatever action potentials it receives from neurons connected to it (or whatever else is physically happening in the brain), then Sapolsky would say this demonstrates free will. Sapolsky isn’t saying he can explain why you made a certain choice, but rather that you couldn’t have made any other choice if you could go back in time. Sapolsky’s definition of free will is such that if determinism is true then there is no free will (the two cannot coexist). However, compatibilists (who make up 60% of philosophers) believe in both determinism and free will but they define free will differently from the biological reductive way Sapolsky defines free will. If you decide on a babysitter after carefully reviewing the backgrounds of a dozen candidates, and you perceive that you are acting in full control according to your motivations without coercion or restraint, then compatibilists (and probably most people) would say this is free will. Sapolsky would agree we all have a natural perception of free will, and it is this perception, even if it’s just an illusion, that compatibilists would essentially define as free will (or as Daniel Dennett stated in his debate with Sapolsky: “Everybody who says they have free will, they’ve got it right because that’s what free will really is.”). The most meaningful difference is that for compatibilists, things like responsibility, shame, remorse, blame, punishment, meritocracy, praise, reward, and what we earn or deserve still have meaning whereas Sapolsky says these things no longer make any sense (but should we be telling people that these things make no sense because of the effects this might have on criminals currently running loose in society, and on our basic motivations to achieve and excel?). Although we couldn’t have done things differently in the past, Sapolsky isn’t saying everything in the future is predestined in the sense that we can’t change. He’s saying that while we can’t choose to change, we can change by circumstance. For example, if you tell a convicted drunk driver what he ought to do in the future to not drive drunk again, you’re creating a circumstance (new knowledge) that hopefully reduces the chances of him driving drunk. Using words like “ought” and “should” doesn’t mean you’re saying he has a choice, you’re simply hoping he takes your advice. What he actually does in the future, or how he reacts to your advice (for example, carefully considering it or instantly violently rejecting it) is not a choice he makes, but is still the result of his past history up to that time. If we try to make the world a better place, we are creating circumstances for others that will hopefully influence them for the better so Sapolsky would say we shouldn’t stop trying.

[@joenunez3800]

Informative, thanks

[@SystemsMedicine]

Hi Zuumville. Well, as a practical matter, quantum mechanical outcomes can definitely be independent random variables. To the extent that the chemistry of neural connections, or other brain functions, amplify this quantum randomness to the macroscopic level, the brain makes non deterministic decisions. [This is why Penrose, incorrectly in my opinion, involves microtubules in his ideas about consciousness.] While this fundamental randomness is well established in physics, non deterministic behavior is insufficient to demonstrate ‘free will’.

[@1alway]

These are great comments. I wrote an essay on free will which supports the above. I should try to get it to Mazza

[@TeaParty1776]

Sapolsky is an illusion.

[@SystemsMedicine]

@@TeaParty1776 Greetings TeaParty. What a great comment. Normally, I would have laughed and moved on, as I’m sure many people who read your comments do. But this has been a long wonderful and terrible day far me, and your quick comment is the perfect comedy capper. Thanks. And Cheers.

[@DaboooogA]

I still agree with Robert Sapolsky - a great deal of what we are discovering in these fields of research is how deterministic our biological processes are.

[@TeaParty1776]

The unfocused mind discovers only its own impotence.

[@theofficialness578]

@@TeaParty1776The point is how focused a mind/brain can be is biological.

[@TeaParty1776]

@@theofficialness578 Can be yes. But whether it will be is from free will. Brains are not focused on unfocused. Only minds have that potential. You evade your own experience for pseudo-scientific subjectivism. Science is based on mans free will choice to focus his mind. Science is not automatic, like breathing. You, for example, have chosen unfocus. Thus whatever you claim cannot be knowledge of reality. Your words are mere animal expressions, like a parrot imitating the sound of human speech, w/no consciousness that those sounds symbolize reasoning. You may as well burp or exclaim "ouch" when you hurt yourself. Focusing mind is the basic moral responsibility IF you want to live.

[@PrometheanRising]

@DaboooogA so what you are saying is that you are determined to agree with Sapolsky. This basically robs your agreement of any relevance.

[@willnitschke]

Even if Sapolsy's claims were correct, they are useless as presented, because they are irrefutable. That's fine for a religion, but not for thinkers.

[@Eddie_of_the_A_Is_A_Gang]

Free will is a material reality, so it would take form in neurological processes. The description of those process, does not negate free will, just like the description of the process of the organs partaking in Homeostasis, does not negate the fact it exists. Love is just chemicals in your brain, it does not undermine or disprove the emotion of love, that we experience. Both Religious people and Scientisms people do this exact thing. They take a physical description of a process we experience as a means to disprove it. It's nonsensical. Objectivism has the only correct view of Free Will that both discards ''spiritual'' non-determinism and Determinism as the invalid concepts they are.

[@user-qm4ev6jb7d]

I think Objectivism would benefit from taking determinism seriously instead of discarding it. None of what you said disagrees with determinism. The choice does in fact exist, *but also* it's deterministically caused by plain old physical circumstances.

[@glennjohn3824]

First thought wrong. Free will is a fallacy of egotistical attachments to fallacies and false identities. You have been conditioned by a fake world to believe you're real.

[@TheBhutofJolokia]

​​@@user-qm4ev6jb7di think the question of free-will vs determinism, that both are true in their own degrees. How can they contradict when in basic metaphysics, it should be already understood that there are some things within your control and much more that which is not. And because we could in our conceptions grasp what is and what is not? Therefore we should exert ourselves over every single thing or to give up entirely? Free-will exists with what is in your consent, hence critical thinking and an open capacity for continual learning will give you more opportunities than saying life is made up for everybody including myself. You don't have to lean into either side absolutely. The truth is in the middle, it is called life or rather what is living. Is life dependent or independent? Neither, it is nothing more than what it is and nothing less likewise. To measure a thing is to not interfere with nature, to perceive its relation to other things is to learn what is similar and what is different. The issue is what we do about it, leave it be and do not interfere? Or to interfere and disrupt nature? If you want to understand you'll choose not to interfere, but to pay attention and learn. If you want power, you'll interfere without understanding. Absolute determinism seems to be a device made for men's conceptions so that they may pretend to justify some as greater cogs than others. A good read: The Thwarting of Laplace's Demon by Richard Green.

[@fiesbert5677]

If cause and effect is supposed to prove that free will is impossible I dare to claim the easier resolution of the conflict is to consider cause and effect to be flawed. If you ignore relativity whiel calculating how long a bike ride is going to be, the error your will be making is so small it can barely be called an error. If you do the same on a sattelite cruising through orbit, you will be very wrong. Calcualting travel time without relativity is not wrong. It is useable for many circumstances. Probably cause and effect is similar. We already know that we can't find a start of the universe in the sense of cause and effect. I dare to say cause and effect only applies while looking at some earthyl occurences but is useless while looking at the cosmos, a microcosmos or consciousness

[@TeaParty1776]

@@user-qm4ev6jb7d Obj recognizes three types of dererminism: material, biological, mind.

[@bjrnhagen4484]

How would Robert Sapolsky consider a situation in which, beyond his control, he changes his mind, from not believing in free will to believing in it? Which is entirely possible in his deterministic framework. He must then think something like, _-I now believe in free will, but I don't know if it is because I have chosen to believe it. Maybe I am only determined by circumstances beyond my control to now believe in free will. So I don't really know what to believe._ But if he does so, he has freed himself from his alleged determinism using reason.

[@no_sht_sherlock4663]

Logically, either something is caused or uncaused, no escaping that dichotomy. Something uncaused is random and something caused is determined.

[@no_sht_sherlock4663]

Asserting I have free will because I choose to is entirely circular

[@bjrnhagen4484]

@@no_sht_sherlock4663 I assume you don't believe in free will, which means you don't know what you might believe tomorrow, since it's out of your control. So if you wake up tomorrow believing in free will, while also having a notion that determinism may have led you into it, how would you assess that situation, do you then believe in free will or not?

[@dinksmallwood5561]

Free will as cognitive self-regulation - Dr. Binswanger expressed exquisitely both in the title and the content of his essay.

[@dinksmallwood5561]

Determinism is non-cognitivism in all issues. Nothing can be derived from it, no sense can be made of anything going on within our minds or withing the external world. Here, Sam Harris comes in and declares consciousness to be an illusion and other follow this up by declaring everything is an illusion. Another determinist then comes in and points out that we cannot trust nor know anything, not even this statement. Everthing is utterly nonsensical and all experience and all knowledge is simply at matter of faith. The mystics and skeptics of the world rejoice - and so do all evil people, like cult leaders, who prey upon people based on these "ideas". Determinism is a false and an evil theory - through and through.

[@TeaParty1776]

@@dinksmallwood5561 > consciousness to be an illusion Illusion is a state of consciousness.

[@dadsonworldwide3238]

Obviously I can detect your free will inertia and measure it in our environment relative to the only true known standard that deterministicaly tunes all precision instruments that we built our world upon If no one plays musical chairs of super position of scale to get the answers they want this is easy to measure. I walk to the door determined all cells in my body moved yet they still had infinite degrees of freedom & mobility independently of what I determined. The and only true standard of longitude and latitude of a nation ppl place or thing. Soul agency is a debate that which anylitical minds separates us from animals but may unite us with compute. As far as that ground floor of reality itself ,eternal cosmos greater system at large bound up tension of subjective properties that we find emerging energetic actors 1atoms 2 lattus structure and body or personal actors of free will inertia 3 critical extreme states ,frame of reference or environment. You and even the cmb background and all of its horizon paradoxes on all scales really doesn't tell us anything below photons ,electrons Standard models. No one can measure if hamiltonian occelating waves feilds or gravity is fundamental or just something that emerges. I personally think the reality generator Is subjective properties then emerging idealism then physicalism but we can't prove that deterministically. Not like we can 3 lines of measure = truest True known standard. Flip thst infinite sums of complexity into probable spaces we can put faith in the spirit of God hovering over the waters of cosmos nature building breathe of life giving but even a faithful believer knows this is very subjectively deterministic. You stay In that 1st position then push infinite sums of complexity into reality generator to human scale and I can locate that 3 lines of measure = deterministic eqaulibrium.. but I still have soul agency to drive free will inertia that you can detect and measure as I evolve my frame of reference how I see fit . You can measure changes in that environment. We can't even force the old babylonian evolutionary model to accommodate galaxies without mirroring the paradoxes the cambrian explosion of life stress's. The most funding in human history parasitically draining the actual methods of advancements. Most time spent not just the past 100 yrs but.mosr of ancient history tried the sameway as well .

[@TeaParty1776]

You can destroy your mind with intellectual chaos.

[@dadsonworldwide3238]

@TeaParty1776 or just whataboutisms like Socrates and nilhisms like Dionysus. You can also measure this in physical form & shape and thermodynamical systems. Anything other than 3 lines of measure = truest True known standard dose that. Seems to be that way if we Euclidean pov 1st pos newton 2nd einstein 3rd hiesenbergs approach = photon any additional measures we find hindu old world beliefs fall into entangled you hoo woo uncertainty against the grain of nature lol

[@dadsonworldwide3238]

@TeaParty1776 here if your 1st position pov is ground floor 0 of reality infinite sums of complexity subjective space into morr deterministic emerging energetic actors of discrete individual particulate constituant atoms then yes they are very much deterministical simple & uniform like The cells in my body yet still I can determine that move to the doorway realitive to my frame of reference and you can measure that and that the cells still had infinite degrees of freedom independently.

[@TeaParty1776]

@@dadsonworldwide3238 The unfocused mind , stuffed with floating abstractions (glitterring generalities, aprioris) not abstracted from observation, is a danger to mans life. Look out at reality, not inward. Focus your mind.

[@TeaParty1776]

@@dadsonworldwide3238 The unfocused mind is a horror.

[@MrScaramoosh]

Whenever Neil deGrasse is on its normally pseudoscience.

[@ltzmin]

Troubling if you can't distinguish what's pseudoscience and what's not

[@MrScaramoosh]

@@ltzmin That's why people like you should ignore him.

[@TeaParty1776]

Degrasse is a Leftist political activist who chances to be a scientist. He once condemned primitive man for leaving hunting-gathering for farming, saying it was a shame that they didn't predict catastrophic warming millenia hence.

[@TeaParty1776]

Ye, but its Leftist pseudo-science.

[@Primitarian]

Why is Sapolsky trying to convince us there is no free will if we have no free will? Answer: He, too, believes in free will. His appeal that we embrace his belief system presupposes that we do, he just chooses not to acknowledge this. As for me, I choose not to believe that physical determinism leaves no room for human agency, though I would be willing to change my mind if he actually came up with a sound argument (which he has not).

[@no_sht_sherlock4663]

Why is he trying to convince you of the truth if it's true??? You've asserted he's lying with absolutely no justification other than your intuition. Logically there's no escaping the causal / acausal dichotomy. If something isn't caused its random and if something is caused, it's determined. There's literally no 3rd option

[@Primitarian]

@@no_sht_sherlock4663 "Why is he trying to convince you of the truth if it's true???" What does that even mean? You're denying that he's trying to convince us what he believes is true?

[@Primitarian]

@@no_sht_sherlock4663 Re "Logically there's no escaping the causal / acausal dichotomy. If something isn't caused its random and if something is caused, it's determined. There's literally no 3rd option": The third option is that our system of logic is incomplete and that causation can be more complex than it may often seem. Not every logical proposition lends itself to a tidy true or false. The same can be said of causation, particularly when conceived of as nothing but the result of causes that are entirely discrete and external. For example, NASA defines life as a "self-sustaining chemical system capable of Darwinian evolution." What is "self-sustaining" but an entity acting as a cause of itself? Is that acausal? If every cause must be external, yes; however, if a cause may be internal, then it is causal in the sense that here is a form of causation that depends on "self" and a "system." Likewise there is the word "motility," which has been defined as the "ability of an organism to move independently." What is independent movement but causation that derives from an internal rather than external cause?

[@no_sht_sherlock4663]

@@Primitarian I've got no reason to believe anything you've said because it can't be logically broken down in a "tidy" true or false. Congrats on your self own ! 🏆

[@Primitarian]

@@no_sht_sherlock4663 How exactly did I "self own" other than in your own subjective opinion?

[@CM-xs2eb]

Arguments about Freewill are essentially semantic - with the most differences in opinion revolving around how precisely we define “free will“. It is ridiculously narrow end counter to allay persons intuition to define “free will“ as an ability to manifest choice in decision making that is not derived from some underlying bio physical process that, if queried prior to your conscious experience of making a choice, could perfectly predict Your decision. Not only is this probably not neurologically true - but even if it were, it says nothing of how a lay person conceives of “free will“ as an enduring and characteristic pattern of decision making that relates to our own personality and accumulated wisdom and experience. The assertion that our behavior or perception of choice in our behavior is actually mediated by deterministic bio physical events is also not sufficient justification for inferring that people are not responsible for their own success, failure, or deeds. There is no logical connection between these two ideas. If I program a robot to kill, it has no free choice, by definition, but it is still responsible for killing as the agent that interacted with the world to bring about this series of events. Responsibility does not depend on Freewill.

[@TeaParty1776]

Self-Responsibility depends on free will

[@TheBhutofJolokia]

Proving free-will, what i really have to say about this? "If God wanted to be disproven, He would've gave us proof." A long time of contemplation concerning any subject in any domain, you can refute just about anything. The question is always rather, what choice do we have?

[@TeaParty1776]

Proof is an action of free will. Breathing is merely biological.

[@TheBhutofJolokia]

@@TeaParty1776 consider both parts, you can choose to either pay attention to your breathing and to change or control it, or to allow it to be naturally. Which is why i don't believe in either free-will or determinism absolutely but i consider both sides as fractional perspectives of the truth of totality and its living.

[@mrbriight]

I think that consciousness and freewill emerge from nondeterministic properties of matter in aggerate

[@PrometheanRising]

The really bad miss on their part is that, by their own theory, their problem with holding people accountable is just what they are determined to think. And the people who want to hold people accountable are just determined to want to punish them. There's no validity to any of the conclusions, it's just what they are determined to conclude. It is really kind of a brain in the vat for morality that they have constructed though they don't seem to realize it. Basically, under their view, no matter how morally certain you are, there could always be some sort of unaccounted for factor that is controlling why you have reached that conclusion.

[@TeaParty1776]

Are you pro or con free will?

[@schizotypal4966]

The problem with Sapolsky's argument is quite simple. We may have no free will at all, but the sheer number of factors affecting our decisions is so large, that we cannot even come to a quantification of factors that affected a particular decision, their relative probabilistic weighs and so on. And as practice shows, giving everyone carte blanche on everything is not a good idea for one's survival.

[@user-qm4ev6jb7d]

Sure, but if you can identify *just one* factor that has a measurable influence on a choice, and if that influence is in a direction that you don't like (indeed, the person doing the choosing probably doesn't like it either, feeling as if he's been "tricked"), then why not alleviate this one factor for your and everyone else's benefit?

[@IFRBUR4EVER]

How about the idea (Landmark) that we have no real control over the initial brain-pattern response. None of us see the response as anything except generated by the individual. My experience is that the brain offers what it offers - from the only possible source - the past. Makes sense, right? And it's my brain that is (in less than 1/2 second) generating the response. And what about the option to recognize that the response is automatic and then having the freedom to make a different choice, or to change the emotional response, or to decide whom to be rather than accept the default response? Through training, practice, and a deep love of freedom (and the power of personal responsibility) I do this hundreds of times a day. It's the gift of intentionality - that it's possible allows me to own my every response - right, of course, after it occurs.

[@Iamjamessmith1]

Everyone talks about free will but almost no one talks about just plain Will. Do humans have a will? I think that answer is self-evident. Yes. Is it free? What is free? What else is free? If we choose one thing we don't choose another thing and there's a cost with that. And it's all about cost and goals. And will. What's the sense in talking about free will? It's like talking about God. Just doesn't make any sense. In my opinion.

[@user-qm4ev6jb7d]

We do have will, but it's not free. Though one truth that we will never avoid is that you cannot know your own choice ahead of time - otherwise, you would have already chosen it. And that's where the whole "illusion of free will" comes from.

[@Iamjamessmith1]

@@user-qm4ev6jb7d Not free?? Not free of what?

[@RonRobertson-lafrance]

@@user-qm4ev6jb7d That makes no sense. Free will isn't predicated on knowing your own choice ahead of time, except possibly in the case of being presented with the same choice you've made previously, and even then you might change your mind based upon new information.

[@user-qm4ev6jb7d]

@@RonRobertson-lafrance I'm saying it's predicated on NOT knowing your own choice ahead of time. The state of not knowing, having to treat multiple options as equally possible, is what creates the illusion of free will.

[@RonRobertson-lafrance]

@@user-qm4ev6jb7d That is not an illusion of free will. If there's a choice, there's free will.

[@SamuelLegrandCox]

Seems to me that Sapolsky and other determinists are very much like religionists of yore. They encounter a phenomenon they can't understand or explain (e.g., thunder), so they invent a god of thunder. Being unable to explain free will, Sapolsky and others invent the god of determinism.

[@TH3F4LC0Nx]

The funny thing is the universe isn't even strictly deterministic. Quantum mechanics tells us that the future isn't fixed, but exists in a nebulous cloud of competing probabilities. And since even the most unlikely of occurrences always has a nonzero chance of occurring, then we cannot say that things are truly deterministic. Free will exists in some form or fashion simply because the future is not definitively written in the now.

[@TeaParty1776]

@@TH3F4LC0Nx The universe is causal, with no randomness. Probability is a measure of ignorance. Free will is man's power to focus or evade, the experience that Sapolsky evades. Volitional causality is just as real as physical causality.

[@allanshpeley4284]

@@TeaParty1776 Both can exist at the same time. The universe can be causal, but randomness can also exist as evidenced by quantum mechanics. However, even in quantum mechanics, probabilities are weighted. For example, it's *possible* for you to walk through a wall if all the atoms align in that way, but it's very, very, unlikely to occur.

[@TeaParty1776]

@@allanshpeley4284 A things ACTIONS are the THINGS actions. A things actions cant contradict the thing. A football and a baseball bounce differently, not because of an impossible random reality, but because they have different properties. Causality is the thing/action relation, not the prior event/later event relation, which is merely coincidence. QM math is valid to describe action but does not identify the cause of the action, ie, why things act a particular way. The average US family has. 2.2 children. .2 is a mental device for measuring, not a fact of reality. .2 children are not real. Look out at reality,not inward. You directly experience thingss w/specific properties actiing in specific ways. No alleged knowledge can contradict the evidence of the senses, which are self-evident. You do not experience footballs bounccing like baseballs. Math is an abstraction from experience of reality, not from subjectvive ideas.

[@TeaParty1776]

@@allanshpeley4284 do u c my prior reply?

[@theofficialness578]

After “experiencing” this debate for the last couple months, it’s becoming more clear that individuals don’t need a notion of “free will” so “they feel in control.” Seems more evident the notion of “free will” is a form of stress relief. It’s the issue of primate hierarchy fundamentally many need “those who they view as lesser” to judge and hate. Especially in American culture, it’s ingrained.

[@allanshpeley4284]

And then we have the disempowered who would try to convince the world that they can't change their lives so they don't have to take responsibility for their own.

[@TeaParty1776]

Your rationalization of the evasion of self-responsibility is noted.

[@willnitschke]

@@allanshpeley4284 Your pointing out the obvious is more convincing then the guy above's fanciful speculation. 😉

[@theofficialness578]

@@TeaParty1776 No I just think the notion is nonsense.

[@TeaParty1776]

@@theofficialness578 Free will is experienced as much as the concrete univerrse is experienced. You evade your own experience. And then rationalize the evasion. Do you experience using a computer? Would you call that nonsense?

[@Norbyyyyy18]

Team Free Will 🙌

[@rifrafbarker]

I would love to hear you take in Sam Harris's arguments against free will. I felt pretty convinced. When meditating, one can really have the experience that we dont chose the next thought or impulse that emerges. We are in some sense.. automatic. Just regurgitating similar thoughts and maybe some insight emerges, but is it free? I suppose its ultimately what you... Do with those thoughts and feelings. Unfortunately i can see sapolski making an arguement for socialism.

[@allanshpeley4284]

The act of meditation itself, is an act of will. It's willing to observe and let pass thoughts. What happens over time? With practice fewer thoughts invade our consciousness. That in itself is an argument for free will.

[@TeaParty1776]

> we dont chose the next thought or impulse that emerges You indirectly choose them by choosing focus or evasion. Eg, choosing focus increases self-esteem. And choosing focus provides the power to create ideas. These ideas are stored in the subconscious and are automatically recalled when thinking about an associated idea. Free Will-Harry Binswanger, in How We Know

[@willnitschke]

You confused 'free will' with randomness.

[@TeaParty1776]

@@willnitschke ?

[@TeaParty1776]

@@willnitschke The universe is causal, as known by the focused mind. Volitional mind action is a type of causality different from biological and physical casusality. Randomness is the content of an unfocused mind. You need a rational metaphysics.

[@maurices5954]

Sapolsky is a living legend, i enjoyed his latest book and was glad to see him doing the rounds again, defending his work, much like the Objectivists, he has an unorthodox position on the concept of free will.

[@TheHerrUlf]

Pretty stupid "living legend" since he doesn't seem to get that he's incoherent

[@MCJustJ420]

Why should I value "his book" if everything is predetermined? He didn't even write it

[@maurices5954]

@@MCJustJ420 Suppose instead of deferring your own volition to me, you decide for yourself whether to read the book or not and see if there is any value in it?

[@MCJustJ420]

@@maurices5954 if there is no freewill, he didn't write a book, the book is just another product of determinism, his argument negates the value of his own work

[@maurices5954]

@@MCJustJ420 Read the book or don't, I'm just saying i enjoyed it, just like i enjoyed reading other books of his as well as consuming some of his lectures. I would have much preferred to see ARI actually contact Robert Sapolsky for a conversation and hash out their differences, he wasn't shying away from any arguments upon the release of this book so it's not like he is unapproachable.

[@MichaelDamianPHD]

Sapolski is just another clever reductionist fool.

[@TeaParty1776]

Christianity has a day for celebrating foolishness.

[@willnitschke]

It's depressing that people as thick as the guy in the above clip is assigned the label 'intellectual'. No, nobody needs to refute your abstract philosophical assertion. It's your task to disprove why something we observe continually is not 'real'.

[@alamagoddystyle]

Comments section is full of those who have overwhelming desire to control their World which is random.

[@willnitschke]

You make no sense. If the universe is random, then there is no determinism either.

[@xenadonau8356]

We can do what we will but we can't will what we want

[@allanshpeley4284]

Where's your evidence? I've done so most of my life, except when I choose to be passive.

[@xenadonau8356]

@@allanshpeley4284 evidence is all around us. Look how marketing or mobile gaming works..we are not rational beings, our decisions sometimes dont make any sense. Either you, nor I cant like all things equaly. Because I choose to like computer science, since it should rationally enrich my life, doesn't mean I will.

[@TeaParty1776]

Emotion is indirectly caused by free will. You choose to think about an idea. You choose to evaluate that idea. Your emotion is an automatic response to your evaluation.

[@xenadonau8356]

@@TeaParty1776 no and no. Your emotions depend on many things that are out of your control. Your education, surroundings and even your hormon level. Ask any woman with pms, or any guy with spermtoxicosis to evalute situations rationaly. I didn't "choose" to think about ideas. My parents supervised my education, I had a priveledge to debate with my brother about ideas..there is not a single element of choice in that. Were my surroundings any different, I would be in a completely different place.

[@TeaParty1776]

@@xenadonau8356 My comments are from common human experience, not specialized knowledge. To be human is to be man facing the universe, whether one is an African cannibal, a steel worker in Germanys Ruhr Valley or a Hollywood director. All humans have the same basic experience of the universe, whatever differences result from age, historical era, ethnicity, nation, sex, economic class, etc, etc. Contra Marxists and Nazis, there arre not different kinds of humans. There is only human. And when one thinks about ones basic experiences, eg, of material things, motion, time, space, emotions, other people, ideas, values, sex, work, art, sports, etc, one knows that all people experience them. Thus anthropologists can discover a tribe that barely knows another tribe 20 miles away and they can already know something about them before they know the particulars. The study of common human experience is philosophy. Emotions are psychosomatic responses to ones evaluations of ones knowledge of existents. To feel an emotion about something is to psychosomatically experience your evaluation of thaat thing. To evaluate something, you must know what it is. To know what it is, you must focus your mind. PMS, hormones and spermtoxicosis are experienced as sensations. Typically, people have some knowledge of these and evaluate that knowledge, causing emotion. This may happen very fast, making the psychological process difficult to identify. Sensations , by themselves, have no knowledge context, eg, hittting your thumb w/a hammerr. Emotions do. But you may be angry because you dont like being clumsy. Ideas are a volitional , non-automatic product, a mental integration of abstractions from the evidence of the senses. Merely looking at a book does not cause knowledge of its content, as any tired student knows. You chose to focus your mind on your parents teaching and your brothers debating. The fact that you, as a child, were probably not explicitly conscious of your choices is irrelevant. Other children might have chosen to evade focusing. Mind is volitional, not, like heart and lung pumping, automatic. This volitional nature of the mind has been sensed, but not understood, for virtually all of mans 300K history. But all people knew when they were ignorant of something important to their life. They knew that they needed knowledge and that it was not automatic. Eg, a farmer who did not know what to do when insufficient rain killed his crops. He probably prayed to his gods, exactly like you thinking that knowledge is automatic. But man must struggle for knowledge. Its a risk w/no guarantee of success. Thus the emotional appeal of an alleged source of knowledge beyond the mind. And the anger and evasion when told that only the volitional mind can produce that knowledge. Atlas Shrugged-Ayn Rand; a story about the role of the mind in mans life. Or, you can listen to Leftists and Rightists advocate a politics that forces man to contradict the judgment of his independent volitional mind with religion or consensus.

[@SystemsMedicine]

Sapolsky insists that free will doesn’t exist… but he is only saying that because he doesn’t have any free will. He insists that all that he says or does is predetermined: he cannot control himself, he MUST say there is no free will (according to his own ideas). If he is just a mindless clockwork mechanism forced to say things by physics, why should I pay any attention?

[@cb73]

And does “should” have any meaning outside freewill?

[@SystemsMedicine]

@@cb73 Hi Cb73. Very nicely put… Indeed, I suppose outside of ‘free will’, a nebulous idea itself, “should” would merely be a placeholder term for an evaluation which a given mind is absolutely forced to make. Are we all empty tin men? [Chomsky is annoyed with anti free will people; he says they all act as if they believe in free will anyway. But I am inclined to think he has a deeper reason: a fully deterministic philosophy would imply people have no real responsibility for anything they think, say, or do. For an activist such as Chomsky, this is a nightmare scenario.]

[@cb73]

@@SystemsMedicine at the end of the day, determinists have to concede that they are just playing a semantics game when it comes to how to shape a justice system in light of no moral choices. Because, whether or not you believe a person who intends to do you or your loved ones harm, is someone who had control over their intentions, you are still - determined- to protect yourself by any means necessary. It’s no coincidence that a justice system that is based on a scientific deterministic understanding of human behavior will likely look awfully similar to one that is based on one that we have now. We would just use different words. This whole enterprise is completely pointless.

[@tomabdella113]

Thank you for willfully and consciously hitting the nail on the head with the incoherence objection. He tries to impose his smelly moral relativism upon his self-wrought deterministic framework. Thanks for drawing that out.

[@TeaParty1776]

The focused mind speaks. The unfocused mind burps. Branden refuted this irrationalist, uneducated nonsense in 1969.

[@rikvlasblom4272]

All one does, is that what is possible. Could have done differently, is a "prediction" (not really) about the past. Which is worthless. Basically one can only react with the other parts of the environment in such a way that it connects the past with the future. This leaves out all choice. But since we are almost always observing ourselves doing things, we are enormously biased into believing that we have control over these happenings. While in fact, we have no clue at all what exactly is happening within us, nor outside us in the universe. And in fact there is no inside, nor outside, untill we use words to devide reality into such abstractions.

[@willnitschke]

I booked a holiday for New Year and had a dozen hotels to choose from. In the real world (not some abstract philosophical construct) what challenges us, are making the right choices with so many possibilities before us.

[@rikvlasblom4272]

You did the only thing that was possible, based upon all that was before, including your grown preferences and the hotels that were and were not available.

[@willnitschke]

@@rikvlasblom4272 I had lots of possibilities, champ. The problem was too many choices, not there only being one. 😂

[@rikvlasblom4272]

​@@willnitschke I am not saying that you cannot think about possibilities. Nor that you didn't have a difficult time doing that. However the thoughts are abstractions about the subject. Only the thing that you eventually do, is real. This is the actual reaction you have with your environment and vice versa. Including the thinking part.

[@willnitschke]

@@rikvlasblom4272 That assertion is empty circular logic. "It happened because it had to happen that way because it happened that way because I said so." When you make an assertion that is impossible to disprove, you're engaging in meaningless ideology or religious nonsense, sorry. Can you make a claim that is at least in principle falsifiable? Of course you can't.

[@caricue]

Sapolsky is just the result of an egotistical child resenting being scolded by moralistic parents. Now he will believe or say anything to avoid the pain of personal responsibility.

[@theofficialness578]

He is a successful Stanford professor, a successful primatologist and neurologist. Has a successful multi decade marriage. Two healthy children, with one that’s going to Harvard. Thats what he’s not taking “personal responsibility” for. The real question is why do so many need the notion of “free will” to judge lives they have not lived.

[@caricue]

@@theofficialness578 Wow dude, I never said anything about Sapolky's career or personal life, so I'm not sure what you think you are defending. If you really listen to what he argues in relation to free will you hear nothing but sophistry and excuses for the whole idea of being held responsible. In the end, it's God that he is fighting against, not reality.

[@theofficialness578]

@@caricue To me “god” mostly certainly isn’t reality, and thats not how you worded your statement… It seemed to imply his talking of “personal responsibility”.

[@caricue]

@@theofficialness578 You can quibble all you want about specific words, but Sapolsky and Sam Harris use pure sophistry to try and convince the world that they aren't responsible or shall we say, guilty, for the very actions that they do. No one but "you" has control of your voluntary muscles, so who exactly are we to blame or praise for your own words and actions? (If you answer 'no one' then I rest my case.)

[@TeaParty1776]

No, he chooses to evade and rationalize. Its not a psychological response.

[@user-ci2mn1oy3w]

we CANNOT as a society, let poss prey upon us, to include not just letting others swarm over our border and take what others have built up.

[@TeaParty1776]

poss?!

[@glennjohn3824]

Short answer is no, you don't have free wiil.

[@equaltoreality8028]

Determinism is a self-contradiction.

[@matthewstroud4294]

Were you forced to say that by all past states of the Universe?

[@ltzmin]

​@@matthewstroud4294and the evidence

[@glennjohn3824]

@@matthewstroud4294 lol... forced? No. We are conditioned with beliefs starting with identifying with a name that isn't you... Truth never changes but your name can.

[@glennjohn3824]

@@equaltoreality8028 agreed

[@user-qb2ze8pn9c]

Dude ur clueless