Ep 73 | UTOKing with Rick Repetti | Determined to Be Free

In episode 73, Gregg welcomes Professor Rick Repetti. Rick is a philosopher who has long standing interests in meditation, the self, agency, and free will. He was previously on an Inside UTOK conversation with Gregg, where his shared his views of the meaning crisis, work with John Vervaeke, and his development of a new vision for truth systems call the Knowledge Coin. In this episode, he and Gregg talk about the concept of free will in relationship to Robert Sapolsky’s new book, Determined: The Science of Life Without Free Will. Both Gregg and Rick agree that Sapolsky provided a very weak argument, one that was lacking in philosophical sophistication and was anchored to an outmoded, reductive view of scientific knowledge. In addition, his conclusions about how we justify blame and responsibility are poorly defined and dangerous. UTOK provides a much clearer view on how to understand human agency and processes of justification pertaining to blame and praise.
ℹ️ - - - Find out more about Rick Repetti - - - ℹ️
Homepage: www.rickrepett...
ℹ️ - - - Find out more about Gregg Henriques - - - ℹ️
Psychology Today: www.psychology...
Medium: / gregghenriques
Twitter: / henriqgx
🌳 - - - The Unified Theory of Knowledge - - - 🌳
Homepage: www.unifiedthe...
Medium: / unified-theory-of
Wikipedia: en.wikipedia.o...

[@williamjmccartan8879]

Good to see Rick again, now speaking with Gregg, after seeing multiple conversations with John, thank you both very much for sharing your time and work, have a great day, peace

[@missh1774]

Yayyy Rick and Morty...I mean Gregg! Free Will bureau yesss

[@realsushrey]

What a wonderful conversation. Both of you gave a fantastic critique of the anti-free will arguments. UTOK really shined in this conversation as to the clarity it can bring while navigating such difficult topics.

[@Parsons4Geist]

look out Robert Sapolsky😮

[@MrEgelados]

Why does this video has only 465 views, while interviews of Sapolsky have 200k+ ?

[@mikegarrigan5182]

Free will, Determinism, is there a middle way? From my perspective, there is self organization, in a deterministic environment. Perhaps, in the process of organizing, focused awareness is needed which presents itself as agency. Tornadoes are conditional organizing but has no self. Maybe the middle way is the environment harmonizes with the conditioned agent that can project the free will or deterministic experience.

[@PeterIntrovert]

I think the crucial thing to do at first is to get rid of misconception that free will is about agency - it isn't. Agency is about processing information. Without causality there couldn't be agency. Free will seems to be artificial and vague religious concept that was constructed to control masses by policy of blaming. Behind free will stands an assumption that you always could behaved in different way than you did. It's something that was meant to state your independence from the world. But you don't need independence to be intelligent agent. That kind of idependence is only needed for ideology to create justification for blaming you. Well, everybody can have own opinion. But I see strong belief in it rather than a strong argument. I am able to accept free will as an axiom for quantum probability distribution but this move don't add or change anything in discussion, does it mean that biology is not responsible for our behaviour? We are our biology and our choices are what self-organization looks like from a certain perspective, that self-organization is a worldly process and not little homunculus-like-indeterministic feature.

[@PeterIntrovert]

That conversation could be good if limited to respectful considerations of arguments and perspectives. However, it reveals how biased Gregg and Rick can be. There are many eristic arguments, logical fallacies, contradictions, and unpleasant mocking. They made a lot of false assumptions and addressed them instead of focusing on the main issue. I don't deny differences in their and Robert's positions but If we go to the core of the argument, there isn't disagreement between Sapolsky's point and theirs. The distinction lies in their religious stance, whereas Robert prefers to stay with logical conclusions. Ricky and Gregg associate Sapolsky's position with reductionism and Newtonian linear logic, but in his lectures, Sapolsky embraces non-linearity and the emergence of new functions, contrary to the billiard balls metaphor projected onto his position. Will, agency, cybernetic control, choice, and so on can be explained in a deterministic framework. In fact, they lack meaning when married to indeterminism (information processing would be imposible without causal consistancy). It's a different subject. Sapolsky argues against reifying FW as a super-power of the "uncaused cause." He provides logical arguments that weren't addressed by Rick and Gregg in good faith. Sapolsky doesn't claim we don't make conscious choices; rather, our conscious choices come from everything we were, are, and can be - in the net of causation. The world is meaningful because everything is connected, related, and dependent. Two sound options for the notion of 'free will': 1. Drop it. or 2. Take it as an axiom projected on the probability distribution at the quantum level. If we stay in the context of careful philosophical consideration both decisions are inconsequential. What I am against is confusing the 'problem of free will' with the 'concept of agency' (or traditionally normal will), which was done with a lot of sophistry in the conversation between Gregg and Ricky. The second is entirely compatible with Sapolsky's position and can't be used against him without creating a strawman. There is no point in asking people on the street what they think because it's almost certain that they are confused about it. It's like asking people in the Middle Ages what they think about witchcraft. Robert's book aims to make things about agency clearer. It's not witchcraft, it's not free will - it's our fundamental connectedness with the universe and the unitary flow of it (causation).