Free Will is Political

Free Will - Our Freedom to choose for ourselves - is at the heart of our sense of being human. How we think about free will effects everything from responsibility and criminal justice to laziness and poverty to seemingly ordinary choices like what I’ll have for dinner.
Free Will is of course the power to select from options, for ourselves, unencumbered, unrestrained, uncaused - to be the author of our own thoughts and actions.
But what does this really mean? Does Free Will really exist? And is it a wider social, cultural, and political concept? Is it really about responsibility? I look at a few philosophers - P.F. Strawson, Spinoza, Plato, Socrates, and more - to explore the concept
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[@user-hm4yi7um9d]

I will never understand how certain Christian sects can be like "everything is God's will and determined" while absolutely hating certain people for the way they fall into that hypothetically determined God's will.

[@NankitaBR]

"Everything is God's will but being LGBT is a *lifestyle choice* that has to be changed."

[@adamkimara6919]

Being gay makes you more powerful than God, confirmed

[@dEAthlikEstAtic]

i don't think it's for you to understand, not every1 understands everything just like with music/mathematics/agriculture...that too is part of god's nonsensical will.

[@RT710.]

@@dEAthlikEstAtic lol exactly. It’s not supposed to make sense, it’s supposed to be unquestioned and obeyed. That way it can be used to rationalize and justify anything

[@popopop984]

Religion isn’t rational, it’s brainwashing as a child that makes you think your religion is correct rather than everyone else’s religion and it’s manipulative as an adult because it takes advantage of your own fear and sorrow to drive you in its direction. And the worst part is, it threatens you with annihilation, eternal torture, if you even dare question it.

[@Jetsetlemming]

One of the things about "willpower" that isn't mentioned here is that actions are both influenced choices determined by other things, but also expenses. Filling out a job application takes time and stress and energy. If an action costs you a lot and has a large chance of being a waste of time, as the vast majority of job applications are, then on an animal brain level it makes absolutely no sense to fill out the job application. Doing that almost certainly useless and expensive action HUNDREDS of times, as most poor people do to finally get a job? That feels absolutely insane. That goes against every instinct a person has. Willpower in this case is "the ability to deny your own instincts about taking care of yourself, even as those instincts get stronger and stronger as you grow more desperate, just so you can bend to the whim of the least efficient and most lazy system on earth, the labor market under modern capitalism".

[@LukeMcGuireoides]

Brilliant comment. Thx :)

[@LucBoeren]

Ab so lutely

[@SpecialInterestShow]

And then if you have something like depression? It's even worse. It's like starting from a negative amount of energy from the jump!

[@Kayla4217]

@@SpecialInterestShow And the first you'll end up like me, not only working against your body's reasoning not to waste energy filing out applications, but your mind's constant repetition that you do not deserve any job ever because you suck, only to fill out dozens of applications a day with no reply and watch your savings slowly dwindle and hope by the time you're turned out on the street if it'll be before winter.

[@MW-me7vn]

But then (correct me if I’m wrong) this comes back to what the ancient Greeks referenced in the video said about lack of knowledge right? One must remember that filling out job applications while vastly pointless is in actuality the only way one is to obtain a new job, and that not filling out applications is certain to ensure we definitely don’t obtain a new job.

[@TheJayman213]

I like that you mentioned the link between free will and morality. Hans-Georg Moeller recently remarked that nowadays the notion that "if morality does not exist, everything is permissible" is the new "if God does not exist, everything is permissible" and I think free will would also fit that mould; it and morality somewhat being two sides of the same coin.

[@Cecilia-ky3uw]

Everything is definitely permissible, but as long as the free will has morality, no bad thing would be preferable

[@matthewatwood207]

There was a really poorly done study about free will and morality that I've seen referenced too many times in this debate over the years, where the scientinsts had college students watch something either explaining determinism and asserting its reality (i wish I could see the videos they shared, I'm sure they're telling) or refuting determinism. Afterword, they would take a test, grade themselves, and then take a payment for the study based on their grade. I can think of all sorts of factors that should have been taken into account, but were not. If they were very religious, or acted very religious because it is their culture, they could already have some kind of a deterministic outlook or if their religion ties being moral to excercising free will, they could see lack of free will as free reign to shuck morality, at least so far as to take some money that didn't belong to them that they knew they could get away with. How each side is presented is suspect to me as well, as I'm certain that the origin of this study was the desire to prove that determinism leads to immorality. Plus it was done at a white college, and as a white person, I know that my people have very high numbers of very immoral people, all pretending to be moral. In summation, it's a bad study, and I have every reason to believe that the people who designed it are themselves immoral.

[@richardbireley1487]

You absolutely must choose to eat the cake. It will spoil far quicker than the other things. It also is a lot less of a time commitment.

[@aaron2709]

Sorry, 'choosing' is not a thing.

[@captainbritain7379]

I’m glad you’re talking about this. My philosophical belief in determinism has indeed had a significant effect on my political beliefs, so I can attest to how important this is.

[@salaziad3136]

Couldn't agree more!

[@mariodosantos]

Same here

[@JM-us3fr]

Same

[@kevincurrie-knight3267]

As unintelligible as I think free will is, I think determinism (or belief in it) is unjustified. First, it is a strange contradiction to say that one beileves in free will if one does not allow 'belief' to contain a matter of 'will' (or something like it) in it. (One could say that they were determined to believe in free will, but that is to say nothing more than that one believes what one believes). But secondly, belief in determinism tends to be based on - Lewis said it in the video - the idea of a law of cause and effect that we now apply to humans. But why apply it to humans other than that we have no good reason to think humans are different from anything elses we readily apply it to? Seems compelling, but it's just an unsupported generalization. In many ways, we readily admit that humans are different from other beings around us (we have opposable thumbs, we are capable of language other beings are not, we produce culture in ways others do not, etc); so why when it comes to the alleged law of cause and effect, we see humans as no different from other matter?

[@kevincurrie-knight3267]

(To clarify, I"m not arguing that we have anything like free will. My position is that the western tradition has so confused the question of free will that no existing options make much sense... but that's the fault of the question and how we ask it.)

[@mylifeinpoetrypodcast]

I actually really look forward for your videos. Keep on with the good work.

[@ThenNow]

Really nice to hear, thank you

[@doentexd4770]

"You can change what you do, but you can't change what you want" - Thomas Shelby

[@Mewzyque]

That's inane of course you can change what you want.

[@noah5291]

​@@Mewzyque let's say you can change what you want. so basically, you can change your want to want things? But can you change your want to want to want things? can you change your want to want to want to want things? at a certain point, you simply wouldn't have access to the mechanisms. either way it's all seemingly physical causal system anyway.

[@markaguilera493]

@@Mewzyque Can you force yourself to do something you neither want to do nor think is ethical?

[@manevonweimar6201]

Yes, you can@@Mewzyque. You can.

[@manevonweimar6201]

@@markaguilera493 depends on your definition of you more than your wanted unwanted wants.

[@Xerxesjc28]

I always come out from watching your videos feeling like I learned something new about something I never even thought about.

[@Cecilia-ky3uw]

I have a deterministic, non fatalist worldview, this has indeed a massive effect on my political views including radical views on prisons

[@brianistenes9615]

I see no reason why our thinking about prison would change if determinism is accepted. If criminals have no ability to do otherwise than commit crimes, then the society has no ability other than to punish and imprison them as harshly as the general populace sees fit. Society (in shaping modern prisons) doesn't get to exercise choice if individuals within it cannot. That would either be an appeal to strong emergence or magic.

[@shawn6669]

@Brian Istenes: You seem to be suffering from not having looked up or thought about the position of determinism at all. If someone ends up criming because they can't do anything else then there's 0 need for retributive justice. Being able to look at this situation clearly would allow us to change the incentives in society so that they more clearly map to the reality of what's going on and address it accordingly. If someone needs to be locked up or needs some sort of therapy or counseling or assisted living then we could address that clearly without the need to treat the offender cruelly. We know they couldn't do other than they did. Anyway, I completely disagree with your "argument". I'd study up on the subject a little more if I were you. Namaste...

[@brianistenes9615]

@@shawn6669 I think you're misunderstanding. I agree with you here that IF we could choose to be rehabilitative over retributive, it would be better, generally. My argument is that in a deterministic view we as a society punish in the same way they as an individual do crime, like billiards knocking together from time immemorial. You say we should change the incentives, and I agree again, but such positions make an appeal to possible choice somewhere in the system. We must have the ability to change things in general to change the incentives in any socially just and cognizant way. I try to think and read on this debate as much as I can and won't insult you. Namaste.

[@madisondampier3389]

@@brianistenes9615 You can change the range of options someone has with new information, this was discussed in the video. Retributive justice operates on the idea that people who perform some crime act out of their own free will and desire to do harm, not for the sake of bettering their situation temporarily (under the presumption they don't get caught and prosecuted of course). The people responsible for how we run prisons are the determinants of exactly that, we don't live in a direct democracy where every citizen votes for every policy decision. "Society" is less responsible in general than politicians are, since politicians do not take into account every single opinion of the population they are considered responsible for yet are considered representative of the whole population they reside over, it's "faster and more efficient" at the cost of accuracy to the demands of the public. This representative position can be manipulated so long as you can be the informant of said politician, either as a hired professional or through engaging them with information campaigns in media broadcasts that you know they watch. If you can manufacture the reality to someone that people behave in a certain way for certain reasons, you can also present your own solutions regardless of actual benefit, since they already trusted you to present them the facts as they are. Hence, as both cause and symptom, we have the famous archetypes of criminals in news and media, of people who are out of control of themselves, people who commit crimes for the sake of destruction itself.

[@brianistenes9615]

@@madisondampier3389 My original point is more precisely that the society (or politicians, as you point out) must do as they collectively desire. Whether that is rehabilitative or not is less important to the point I was trying to make. I also think our justice system is overly retributive.

[@BitchChill]

We don't have much control of our lives as we'd like to believe

[@musicdev]

True. But convincing people that they do have a lot of control over their lives is a great way to stop them from demanding better. And we’ve completely bought into it…

[@wendyleeconnelly2939]

control over your actions and control over your life are connected concepts, but not identical

[@terryyakamoto3488]

@@musicdev But how can they demand better when the people whose responsibility it would be to provide better don't have much control of their lives either and therefore have a justifiable reason for not providing better

[@quitecontrary.]

This is what I was thinking for a while, but I couldn’t put it in words. Excellent video! Subscribed :)

[@nicuhosu]

Great video! The conclusion of this essay comes very close to my personal views too. Conditions is what we need to be the "right" kind of people who make "better" choices. That said, one thing I wish you had put more emphasis on is the subjective experience of choosing. In a way, I personally don't care about the ontology, physics or metaphysics of free will. Some scientists now talk of free will happening on some mysterious quantum level in the brain. Does not matter. What matters is that when I make a choice it FEELS like I am making a choice. Indeed, the only way I can live my life as an individual is if I can at the least entertain the idea that I am making choices. Otherwise I am a rational, reflective spectator trapped within a vessel. This FEELING of freedom is vital as it not only connects to mortality (I'm thinking Hume here) and personal identity but to psychological states also. A depressed person does not feel like they can do anything, so they lose even their will for simple negative freedoms. Also, on a broader level, in a healthy and secure society, more individuals feel like they have options and thus more individuals end up making "better" decisions!

[@matthewatwood207]

I think we can get beyond choice being removed from the equation just as we got beyond will. There is a will and a choice, they're just not free. That subjective part is where the dynamic causes to the effect of our choice meet the boundary of our self awareness, and I absolutely agree, it is a subject in dire need of more discussion.

[@Richard_Stroker]

I agree with you that we should put more emphasis on the subjective experience of choosing. But do you think we have a subjective experience of free will when choosing? When I'm asked to choose a film, for instance, I wouldn't say I have an experience of free will at all, even when paying very close attention to the process of choosing. Films simply enter my stream of consciousness without me deciding to put them there. I was not free to choose films that I did not in fact know were films. I was not free to choose films that did not enter my stream of consciousness. Even among the films that did enter my stream of consciousness - _Avatar_ and _Alien_ - I ended up "choosing" _Avatar_ seemingly arbitrarily, just because that's what occurred to me to "choose". Where is the free will in that?

[@PretzelLogic88]

Brilliant! Thanks for making this. A great reminder of how politics permeates even the seemingly most private of matters, thoughts, and emotions

[@seeexy]

yes agree 🙏👍💚

[@NC700xLover]

Excellent video. Having read a fair bit about this topic, I'm genuinely astounded by the accuracy and quality of exposition. Well done.

[@emmettobrian1874]

The difficult part of the question "do we have free will" is, what does it look like to not have free will? The only way you could ever prove that it exists would to be able to rewind time and watch someone make a choice again. In a way, that is possible. People that have certain types of memory loss have been known to ask the same few questions over and over again. Which would point to determinism. However they don't always do it exactly the same way and sometimes won't ask the same questions. So there's some evidence that there is some randomness involved. Only it's still heavily influenced by available information. In the end, randomness is not the same as free will or we would have identified dice and spinners as having their own wills. Free will must then be that a person is able to make choices based on available information internally. That's a much easier bar to reach. In that case, free will is making a choice for reasons another person might disagree with. In that case, yeah we definitely have free will.

[@matthewatwood207]

Randomless, in my opinion, is a scientist's way of avoiding saying "I don't know." There's a long history of people saying, "We know everything there is to know about" such and such, saying a dynamic system is random just because we don't know all the variables, and other such subtle claims of omnipotence by self-important members of the academic community. Brownian motion is full of times people have said, "[object] moves randomly," and then we find a smaller particle in the substrate that explains that motion, but then say that IT moves randomly. "Pollen grains on still water move randomly," until we discover molecules. "Molecules move randomly," until we find atoms. "Atoms move randomly" and so on.

[@emmettobrian1874]

@@matthewatwood207 In this case, that is how I'm using the term. I don't think that even if it was truly random it would equate to free will. What I think free will is, in the way it's used, is selection that's not determined by current outside forces, but by the state of the individual mind. Philosophy may argue that the state inside the mind is determinate base on past inputs. That's true. However, I don't think you can calculate the effects of previous inputs. That's where true randomness rears it's head. On the particle scale, there is true randomness. It's been tested over and over, and the subatomic is probabilistic. Pseudo random can be identified from true random so it's not just a guess. It's proven. In effect every input is sent through a probabilistic filter. So there's a good chance that I will pick certain options, but not 100%. There's no way to start from first principles to say I absolutely will choose an option. You could however give a probability of me taking that option and be accurate. So why does that matter? Because the choice can't be determined before hand even if it's highly probable. The way past inputs are nudged slightly, change the end results.

[@matthewatwood207]

@@emmettobrian1874 what sets the human mind apart from literally everything else, which is bound by the laws of physics?

[@emmettobrian1874]

@@matthewatwood207 nothing at all. In fact I said it's precisely because of the laws of physics that allow for free will. The deterministic universe has been debunked. You can only calculate probabilities at small scales. I'm astonished that people are still peddling the idea that you can calculate the future. It's been disproved repeatedly. If someone thinks it can be done, I'd love to see the math they intend to use because it's not possible.

[@matthewatwood207]

@@emmettobrian1874 which law is that?

[@clarinetsaxist]

Loved the deadpan humor and the final message. I have done these sorts of talks in my head during walks, and have come to the same conclusion, that people improve themselves when given the opportunity.

[@MP4_mafia]

I have recently thought that individualism is at the core of capitalist ideology, and I had also realized previously how environmental causality is, but I'm just now connecting that our deeply internalized metaphysical views of free will are at the center of individualism. The thing is that these core beliefs don't have to necessarily be complex to be ideologically potent, they're just so wrapped up in personal attitudes, obligations and emotional baggage that they're difficult to penetrate. The language surrounding willpower and individualism is deceptive and tricky because it is simultaneously empowering and disempowering. It gives people more by motivating them to achieve better, and have more personal control but it also faults people for their circumstances and makes them blame themself. It's really hard to separate one's true willpower and moral character from understandable reactions and copes to their living situation when the waters have been muddied so much with this language of laziness and we've internalized these judgements as part of our self worth with no clear boundaries.

[@CD4017BE]

It's also interesting how, when you confront someone with the idea that free will doesn't exist, it is quite common to hear a response like "But our entire justice system and concepts of moral behavior depend on the existence of free will and we can't abolish these (otherwise society would collapse or something) so free will must exist!". But when you think about it, this argument is backwards. Instead we should ask "assuming free will doesn't exist, how would we have to change the systems we live by to account for that?". And I think those changes would actually be quite positive.

[@kingkoi6542]

"I" rebel, therefore "we" exist. -Albert Camus

[@terryyakamoto3488]

@@kingkoi6542 Watch out for that fecking tree, aaaagghh - Albert Camus

[@charlieng3347]

Social context is important. Never try to do anything alone. Having friends and supports will really push you to your goal.

[@seeexy]

wdym by social context"??

[@terryyakamoto3488]

What if your goal is to have no friends and be entirely self sufficient

[@Val-ud9fn]

I think it should be stated that scientific determinism is basically debunked at this point. Since the advent of quantum mechanics, with their random probabilities, and the uncertainty principle inherent in them, it's widely accepted that determinism doesn't really hold any water, scientifically speaking. What that means for free will, however, we don't know yet; but the idea of predetermined choices could easily lend itself to eugenics, so I don't think it's a particularly good one to have.

[@josefk332]

I think we do know what that means for free will don’t we? How could anyone be more responsible or in control of intrinsically random quantum-level non-determined events occuring within their cerebral tissue than for any historically-determined events also beyond their control.

[@Val-ud9fn]

@@josefk332 The point is that we still don't fully understand how the brain-mind interface works; we don't know how changes in a few synapses will affect your conciousness at large. But you're right, we don't have control over random quantum probabilities, nonetheless

[@BigHenFor]

@@josefk332 For what it's worth, science is only a map or a model. It's not the territory. It's an abstraction is that it can describe to an extent reality, but never in a complete way. It excludes what it doesn't know. And if we're lucky, more knowledge will uncover more of the terra incognita of existence, and new maps will be drawn, and new responsibilities and freedoms will emerge. Our ideas of responsibility, morality, and free will, are conveniences we adopt to deal with existence in ways that serve us. They emerge from our interactions with each other and the world. They are sum results of the ongoing experiment of living, and because we are social the ideas are communicated and develop a life of their own. But essentially they are information, and the free will is what we do with that information perhaps?

[@DanielBeddingfield493]

"Since the advent of quantum mechanics, with their random probabilities, and the uncertainty principle inherent in them, it's widely accepted that determinism doesn't really hold any water, scientifically speaking." This is just a misunderstanding of randomness. Observations about randomness don't "prove" that things could have happened differently; they merely demonstrate that you can't explain why one thing happened and not the other.

[@LogicGated]

This is something I want so much people to understand, great video!

[@realtd8666]

Right, but from my own experience - I live in a good situated household with plenty of food, space, time and other aspects of human well - being. At the same time I'd say that I'm relatively fairly intelligent, well - educated and informed that for example I have to learn for an exam today, I'm fully aware of the neccessity to do so, I know what the possible consequences will be if I postpone it. Yet, still I cannot force myself to stick to the plan and start to learn early enough. That is about my willpower, concentration and willingnes to "suffer", abandon my hedonistic aproach and do whats right. At this moment its all about me. At this point I do sometimes have the strenght to do so and sometimes I cannot force myself to do the very same thing.And if I fail I know that it was my hedonistic short-sighted part that prevailed, having nothing to do so with my socio - economical background. Great video btw 👍

[@MattStranberg]

Nice work and important message!

[@rahburtheinz]

the willpower i find echoes your invention of individual responsibility video, or vice versa, and i personally love to see it. Love your videos too brodie

[@tylercross8877]

Jordan Peterson needs to watch this channel so he can learn what real philosophy is

[@musicdev]

Lmaoooooo I’m dead True tho

[@liamhackett513]

He says be precise in your speech. Still hasn't given up twitter.

[@JS-dt1tn]

this isn't real philosophy. This is entertainment.

[@liamhackett513]

@@JS-dt1tn people think Petersons hyperbole is philosophy.

[@JS-dt1tn]

@@liamhackett513 also true.

[@Slix36]

The best argument against free will, using subjective experience, that I've heard of: You don't choose your thoughts because you would need to think about what to think before you think it. Consequently, you would also need to think about those thoughts before you thought about them, a process that would necessarily need to be repeated ad infinitum. A 'turtles all the way down' problem. Obviously this is impossible, therefore since we don't think about our thoughts before we think of them we cannot rationally claim we are choosing them. In fact, if you actually pay attention to your thoughts you'll realise you don't really know exactly what's coming next. There's just this voice in your head saying shit. A voice that you recognise as yourself.

[@darionnash6575]

Disagreed

[@josefk332]

“Man can DO what he wants but he cannot WILL what he wants”. -Arthur Schopenhauer

[@Cecilia-ky3uw]

because what he wants is his will.

[@truthbetold8233]

@@Cecilia-ky3uw the point being that you aren't consciously in control of determining what that 'want' or 'will' is.

[@Cecilia-ky3uw]

@@truthbetold8233 yes i understand im just elavorating in a simplified manner

[@lmartinson6963]

With such a provocative title, I felt so sure this video would have something to say. At the end, after concluding that free will doesn't exist, you said that we have a responsibility to make sure we're influenced by good things. You basically delved so far into determinism and moral relativism that you just reinvented free will.

[@donjindra]

Yes, ultimately the anti-free-will people can't help but act as if it does exist. In the end they essentially have a religious position..

[@altosack]

@@donjindra - No, I don’t have a religious belief about my rejection of free will. I feel it’s better to call it “will” rather than “free will” because it has less baggage. The fact that we have will and have in fact evolved to have the experience we have, which evidently contributes best to our overall fitness, even if it doesn’t match reality in every way, is probably not surprising. It’s an illusion of freedom; similarly, having our perceptions matching reality the most closely being the best for our fitness is also something without evidence. I think it’s obvious having a positive attitude is, by definition, a deviation from reality, but the vast majority of behavioral psychologists would contend that it’s beneficial for our well-being. Similarly, the feeling we have of our will being free and under our control seems to be beneficial to our behavioral success, but that, in itself, doesn’t make it so. Although I don’t know if animals experience it the same way, their behavioral model is probably similar; however, they probably don’t analyze or recognize a difference between will and free will, but if their actual lived experience is different at the point of choice, I would be very surprised. At the very least, it seems likely a chimpanzee’s experience in that regard is more similar to us than to a grasshopper, who probably doesn’t know why he jumped at just that moment. See, no religious belief is involved.

[@donjindra]

​@@altosack I also think it's better to call it "will." "I think it’s obvious having a positive attitude is, by definition, a deviation from reality" How so? Are you implying a reasonable person should have a pessimistic attitude toward reality? Or no attitude? "but the vast majority of behavioral psychologists would contend that it’s beneficial for our well-being." I'm not likely to be persuaded by psychologists any more than by a random guy on the street. Nevertheless, I don't see why "will" should help us have a more positive attitude. Does a drug addict's ability to choose give him a positive attitude about himself or reality? Historically I think our will has been cast as a burden, especially by some meddling religious folks. Why do we need any attitude toward nature at all? This is the question we need to ask. If our behavior is indeed a mere matter of fate, a series of sub-states in the universe, something we have no control over, why did nature give us an ability to be conscious of other possibilities? Why aren't we zombies? Does an ant have a positive attitude toward reality? Ants get by pretty well. This is an issue that I don't think people like Sam Harris can explain. We are to believe Hamlet was written in the Big Bang. Shakespeare had the illusion he wrote it. But he merely observed his hand make strokes on paper. He fooled himself and us that he was a dramatist rather than a mere vessel. I see this scenario as wild fantasy. When I say the anti-free will people have "essentially" a religious position, I mean they adopt the position as a matter of faith. And many seem to have a moral reason for adopting that faith. They want to use their faith to "reform" laws or political attitudes. That's what this video does. I don't mean to suggest one has to be a member of a formal religion to have a religious position. The creed itself is a de facto "religion." For example, I count Marxism as a de facto religion. All ideology tends to devolve into a kind of religious dogma and I see most formal religion today as a subset of hard-line ideology.

[@kingkoi6542]

@@donjindra "Just as the technological advances of the modern world have perfected the weapons of physical warefare, so the advance in man's understanding of the manipulation of public opinion have enabled him to refine and perfect the weapons of psychological warfare... And totalitarian psychological warfare is an effort to propogandize and hypnotize the world into submission" -Joost Meerlo "The totalitarian movements that have arisen after the first world war are basically religious movements. Their aim is not only to change political and social institutions, but also to remodel the nature of man and society." -Waldemar Gurian

[@donjindra]

@@kingkoi6542 You're free to believe in the authority of Joost Meerlo and Waldemar Gurian. I, however, do not grant them that authority. I think the empirical evidence shows "brainwashing" works only up to a point and best only on individuals who are predisposed to believe the particular ideas presented.

[@eris4734]

Thank you, I've been trying to put this concept into words for a long time I have a hard time with doing work because it's just a better choice from my perspective not to in any given moment. And that block is especially hard to overcome because trying to overcome it already seems like a worse choice than doing something else

[@seeexy]

🙏🙏i feel u, i hope u find ur reason

[@tooprotimmy]

No one else is talking about the stuff you do. It is important stuff. Keep it up, please.

[@chrisrosenkreuz23]

This was so awesome. I've long been saying it but ofc everyone wants to keep the illusion going. The only real choice is Understanding. Like the Oracle in the Matrix puts it: You're not here to make the choice, you've already made it: you're here to understand WHY you've made it.

[@j.j.r.6075]

Strangely enough, (or not, depending on viewpoint) this corroborates alot with Buddhist approaches to psychology. Not so much the religious or spiritual side, but, it seems, this idea that we can reach a better headspace by taking time to look at and understand our own thoughts, feelings and emotions as they arrise, (instead of 'fighting' against them, or labelling them as sinful guilty, immoral or whatever) we can become 'better' - increasing willpower for good, for more self control, for a healthier psychology and alleviating perceived suffering.

[@chrisrosenkreuz23]

@@j.j.r.6075 true, and also, since you mentioned willpower, that is a referance to purpose: our motives aren't always conscious, and understanding is also a process that can be applied to what is perceived as 'future' not just the causes in the past. We are slaves to it and only in understanding our implicit motives, (the ones that we convince ourselves to be something else than what they are) can we truly be free. It's not for nought that that courtyard scene I've mentioned had Smith's monologue about purpose right after the Oracle's one on understanding.

[@wendyleeconnelly2939]

@@j.j.r.6075 Terms like willpower and self control are consistent with the idea of freedom to choose, not inconsistent with it.

[@j.j.r.6075]

@@chrisrosenkreuz23Yeah, it’s a fascinating way of presenting these two ideas. I actually really love the film haha

[@seeexy]

oh wow 😲, so a question, lets say "u do starts understood WHY" so, it's done. u'v achieves it. but do u think it's necessary to achieve for the rest of the "humanity"/people? it (might) will become the next "trendy" thing, but we still have no free will. then what? the cycles gon repeat. and then what? but another thing comes from the previous thing's result. the cycles gon re updated and will repeat. so ??? im just lost in my head lol

[@adlsfreund]

Willpower is a bit like money... the more you have of it, the easier it is to get. It's also a bit like a muscle... painstaking exercise can be a way to grow it.

[@Recondite101]

Excellent video. I've been reading on the implications of depoliticization and repoliticization in governance and democracy and this video sheds more light on these complicated ideas.

[@dklee.01]

i just discovered your channel and i love it :)

[@ThenNow]

Welcome!

[@jaredsmith1691]

I'm reading through beyond freedom and dignity right now so the timing on this is perfect

[@venusiansociety9483]

Great work! Hope your channel gets picked up by the algorithm!

[@darthJ9]

Is it actually your birthday ? If so, happy birthday!! Love your work

[@carpools5434]

excellent as always- one of the best philosophy channels

[@Ascalafo]

I love your videos so much. thank you

[@virtualselfie6899]

Love your video-graphic collages of Mother Nature, electric yet very calming.

[@edjeezantos7159]

I was looking for what makes a fair Society and i found you. I am learning english and i think this channel it is a treasure.

[@jonathanhijlkema8247]

Nice video. The way I see it, the idea of free will is just a part of the environment that influences behaviour, our culture, laws and our emotions dealing with reality and the emotional need for yhe feeling of control over our lives. I actually find it quite special how its so uncommon for people to go against the idea of free will in a time like ours, where science steers us in such an obvious direction. But then again, religion is still a thing, even amongst scientists, and culture is very influencial in peoples thinking.

[@aaron2709]

"I actually find it quite special how its so uncommon for people to go against the idea of free will..." If there is no free will, people do not 'go against' anything. You are suggesting they could have done otherwise, which requires free will.

[@tkdyo]

So if you are hard determinist does that presuppose that anything we currently perceive as randomness in quantum mechanics is just us not understanding it fully? If there is true randomness at the quantum level, then that could be a source for our freewill. Not every choice follows from cause and effect Also of course, if you believe that there is such a thing as a spirit, then you would also see that as having free will and not being constrained by cause and effect like your body is. Not saying I agree with either of those. But, would be cool to have a follow up video diving in to the other side of the argument. edit: Didn't realize I didn't start off by saying great work. Loved the video!

[@josefk332]

I don’t understand this ‘classical determinism’ v ‘quantum randomness’ (which is intrinsic and not influenced by ‘hidden variables’, if the principle of locality holds, research ‘Bell’s Theorem’) debate in the context of free will. What difference does it make if the dice which ended up determining my actions were rolled 1 second ago or ‘now’ when “I” cannot influence how they land?

[@OKNOWIMMAD12345678]

I remember when I was younger and first encountered determinism. Horrible existential crisis until I read the myth of sysyphus, and accepted things as they are.

[@OKNOWIMMAD12345678]

@@thotslayer9914 plenty! None had such an impact as camus' works and storytelling.

[@cabellocorto5586]

For me, doing away with free will felt like a weight was lifted off my shoulders.

[@cabellocorto5586]

@@thotslayer9914 Yes. Because that is what all life is. A process without a meaning, a series of things happening. No actors. No self. Life is like a river, and being the river at the same time. It is a story, not authored by us but by the universe. I don't agree with compatibilism.

[@cabellocorto5586]

@@thotslayer9914 Yes I've read some philosophy. I don't consider myself a student of it though, because philosophy is a system of thinking, and so even if I agree with certain philosophers like Schopenhauer, I don't need to read a lot of his work. Especially so when it comes to metaphysics, since it is all speculation. No interpretation of metaphysics is more or less valid than another one because it cannot be proved. Schopenhauer's Will to Life is an interesting concept that I can agree with on the surface, but when he tries to systematize it and put lay out how it works, it does not lend any enforcement to any of his claims. This can be said of all philosophers who move into metaphysics. Logos and actorship don't mean anything in my opinion. I don't believe people are invulnerably self-possessed with a divine spirit that allows them to transcend things like biology or causality. I don't believe the self exists as an actor, it is a process. So when someone changes something, it is a process changing, not an actor outside of time and space changing things. Everything exists within the universe, everything, including us and our consciousness is spun into it.

[@CloveCoast]

In the grand scheme of things, it’s harder to prove free will than it is easy. My wants are not of my own creation. You can’t prefer preference. You can’t choose whether you can easily do things that you don’t want to do (unless you just lack the confidence to do it, as opposed to want/inspiration). People everywhere aren’t just changing their careers on a whim several times in a row even after getting comfortable in each career field. You can’t change what skills you’re extraordinary at learning, or whether you had the proper education that suited you as a child as opposed to academically unseen. And those formative years as a kid in school are years you can’t take back, they are mostly at the mercy of your parents or parental figures. Just as you can’t choose whether you grew up in the west or live somewhere in India without internet; I see those things as similarly uncontrollable and relatable catalysts. These catalysts can have more potential of change than any of your own choices. Ever feel like a fish that’s been trying to swim upstream against the current, like you were in denial of some strange invisible parameter? Not that there’s a real parameter but that’s definitely a real feeling of resistance from your inside or even from the universe when you start trying something you are not” per say. Many of our brain processes are starkly anatomical; subconscious impulses, connected to endocrine releases and muscular impulses. So many thoughts are similar to the impulses as well. Some people can’t change certain things about their mind functions even after being pathologized. Obviously there are people in less control and people in more control. I no longer hold the same belief in free will than I believed as a teen. But it’s nuanced and it’s case by case. Some people have more free will than others, and we all have more free will in certain areas than others. But this doesn’t mean our futures are specific destinations. It’s our quirks, wants, fears, goals, successes/failures etc that can each be roughly predetermined by parental nurture, family life, traumas, natural gifts, etc, all of which during your upbringing. I also don’t believe in alternate realities, so that kinda strengthens the case against free will (as we know it). This is one of the few opinions I actually have when it comes to philosophy, and my take on it is presumably derived from my own lives experience. Also I’ve started pondering on this particularly more recently. I wish nebulous subjects like free will would actually be acknowledged more by common people, religious and secular alike to exchange views, because it’s not necessarily a faith-dependent issue. And by the way the question of whether alt realities exist is another big factor in forming a view on free will. Religious affiliation, alt realities, mental health, trauma, these are all some of the biggest factors in forming your opinion on free will existing, I think that’s safe to say at least. What you couldn’t control tends to have much more potential on average than what you (later on) *can* start to control after some formation. The free will definitely hits a max-out point, which can vary with nuance from person to person or action to action.

[@ethantaylor9613]

Working towards keeping people from doing bad things in the future and establishing good outcomes rather than abstract virtues also has a lot to do with how I think our criminal justice system should be run. As an American right now it’s mostly about “punishing the wicked” which is really fucking stupid.

[@LukeMcGuireoides]

It seems to be 99% retributive and penal. So, penitentiaries, i guess. Such a freakin shame

[@LukeMcGuireoides]

The progressive prisons in Scandinavian nations are so much more humane and effective. People in the US would riot in the streets if we adopted similar penal institution. People here are hellbent on revenge as justice. It makes me sick

[@susanwilliams4953]

Thank you, mind provoking.

[@nismos14270r]

Its amazing how often the fundamentals of Buddhism are discovered by the west as new insights.

[@anthonyking4334]

lol, its honestly surprising how spot on they were about the cyclical and chaotic nature of human psychology

[@Luca-si5fy]

As a buddhist, I would like to know which of those fundamentals of Buddhism you are referring to. I guess that you might be talking about Paticcasamuppada (dependent origination), which has been summarized as "When this arises, that arises. When this ceases, that ceases." However, I don't think that Paticcasamuppada implies positions of hard determinism or hard free will though, and I am fairly sure that in other parts of the Pāli canon the Buddha does reject hard determinism when talking about other schools of Indian thought.

[@namelessdark4701]

These aren’t “new”. This debate has been going on since St Augustine

[@ottofrinta7115]

@@Luca-si5fy Agreed with Tyler here. Who would even have free will?

[@Luca-si5fy]

@@ottofrinta7115 If we talk about Buddhism, hard determinism isn't something I am aware to be supported by most schools. For the majority of Buddhist schools we are talking about nothing further than the emotional and volitional conditioning of the psychophysical organism, but not a total lack of agency. I am personally neutral on the matter, and I think that this isn't an overall very relevant topic in the Buddhist theory and practice. I am fairly sure that the Buddha of the scriptures rejects the idea of hard determinism in some critique of the Ājivika sravaka school, however most sources on Ājivika philosophy are secondary. If I recall well, the Buddha was against such an idea because its fatalism might have resulted in negligence when it came to ethics and practice. I might be misremembering and be wrong, so take what I am saying with a grain of salt.

[@maestro56777]

Commenting for engagement, what's the music you used over the last shot. Also, had a big discussion with a buddy of mine on free will sparked by your "Would you have been a nazi" video, really fun and engaging content, thanks so much:) Also, I understand the nature of life requiring videos of this length, I'd just like to say that many of the topics you discuss are robust and deserving enough of longer videos, and when time permits would welcome a revisit on some of these topics in greater detail!

[@ximipa3mahezthasulthansyadi]

Good video btw you're severely underrated

[@PilgrimVisions]

This debate seems to me to illustrate the limitations of present-day analytic philosophy. Because most modern philosophy knows only "billiard ball" efficient causation, every effect must be "determined," and the only alternative is that it is "random/arbitrary." Neither option makes for meaningful free will. You're quite correct, though, that free will classically understood is about "ought"; a free will is one that is able to choose its proper good. This is not "free will" in a vacuum; it is conditioned by internal habit and external constraint, as well as its intrinsic orientation to the good. There's nothing arbitrary about it. But neither is it "determined" in the sense that a choice is merely the sum of its inputs. It's hardly surprising that we today have a tendency to dismiss the idea of free will; science as a method is not capable of apprehending the dynamics of the lived psyche. It is unquestionably mysterious. But reductive determinism turns human experience upside-down. "Free" will of some kind is an experiential given. There is no way to live meaningfully without assuming it. That should tell us something is inadequate about our methods. More relevantly to your thesis, I don't disagree that "free will is political," except for the implication that free will is really, at its bottom, about quantitative factors that, when optimized, will also optimize choice. When Plato talked about "reason," he did not mean information processing. Reducing free choice to quantifying incentives is inherently dehumanizing and implies the kind of technocratic social-psychological control that so easily goes awry and is (in my view) problematic even when it succeeds. We should absolutely create conditions conducive to human flourishing, which is synonymous with our ability to choose the good, but we must also be careful not to erase the irreducible human, to make humans less free by manipulating them through their environment to serve our ends. It's a perennial temptation.

[@devinreed5725]

Discipline. Discipline is how you exercise your willpower. Discipline says we're going to do this whether we like it or not whether I have the willpower or not we're going to do this. I have zero will power to do squats today, but my discipline says too bad.

[@zerotwo7319]

This is a perfect exemple how anyone can be deterministic: Say a clean, simple argument without any possibility of diferent interpretation given the facts presented. Such a reduction of the complexity of life is also political. The fact is, no one knows what exactly is happening inside our minds. Saying one way or other is political, not truth.

[@moth1954]

Most neuroscientists and physicists also agree with the deterministic position that we don’t have free will. Of course there’s still a lot that we don’t know about the mind but the evidence we have now doesn’t leave any room for a force of “will” that can somehow exist outside the laws of causality in the physical universe.

[@zerotwo7319]

@@moth1954 ok, what is the percentage of determinism we have? 50%, 40%? Can you simulate that? Do "the scientists" really know, or it is much more complicated than that?

[@moth1954]

​@@zerotwo7319 It's not about a percentage, it's about the fact that we haven't found anything in the brain or in the realm of physics that would even allow for such a thing as free will. We live in a world of causality where each current event is generated by one that came before. Animals (including humans) follow these laws because they are physical and follow the laws of physics. Of course things get more complicated with complex systems but that doesn't change the fact that every neuron fires because of the prior activity the neurons that are linked to it and the state of various modulatory chemicals that were released before that. Every decision we make is made by our brain which operates on these laws of basic causality. For there to be free will something outside of the laws of physics would have to somehow interrupt the chain of causality and set it on a different course, which makes no sense. Modern psychology and cognitive science also add that the vast majority of what goes on in the brain is unconscious, including information processing and decision making. Every time we (the conscious parts of us) think we're making a decision there are countless unconscious processes going on that make the decision before we're even aware of it. There are even studies which show that what we believe to be the reason we made a particular choice is often not the real reason. One paper showed that the decisions made by judges are largely predicted by how hungry they were despite the complex legal arguments they write up for why they made those decisions. I understand that it's a hard thing to accept because of the strong personal intuition we all feel. I used to be a staunch defender of the idea of free will until around 3 years ago when I finally gave in.

[@zerotwo7319]

@@moth1954 Of course it is, you make a claim, you prove it. We do not live in such a world, there are random events and quantum events. By Scientific definition determinism a flawed conception. There are events that do not have an origin, such as systems wich depend on many parts to function, and independent they do not produce the system. It in fact does change the fact, as the causation of neurons firing are 'translated', rather than chained, information can be lost. Event A causes B in neuron terms is A -> information process -> B. There will come a time were the event that caused the firing is simply lost informationaly. Thus it can be futher processed and even negated. The chain of causality is interrupted at the cell wall. It does make sense. The exterior is unlike the interior, thus the interior can have different entropy than the exterior and not be influenced by it, or choose to let it influence the interior. Modern psychology can be wrong, as all those studies have bias. You know that? Do you understend that you seek to find determinism you will find it, no matter how wrong you are? Or do you even question the validity of a study that say ''what we believe to be the reason we made a particular choice is often not the real reason" How the fuck do you judge that? Do even begin to understand not only the Research difficulty to prove such a thing, or the bias or the flawed method that the research used to give such claim? Were is the simulation? Were is the calculations? the formulas? Give me a number that say how much we are influenced by internal events that we do not control and how much do we control. Or else it is just hot air. I understand that you have political inclination to be in favor of determinism, but I research the truth. Not political bias.

[@hesselino123]

@@moth1954 "it's about the fact that we haven't found anything in the brain or in the realm of physics that would even allow for such a thing as free will." Well at least from a physics perspective, our current understanding of quantum mechanics does imply the existence of non-determinism. I think that this at least creates the possibility that parts of our brain do not function fully deterministically, creating the possibility for the existence of "free will" (although whether this "free will" would be comparable to the one commonly used would also be another thing entirely). I also remember reading that at the scale of ions moving through brain synapses quantum-mechanics could very well play a role. This doesn't take a way that much of human behaviour and decision making is governed by ones surroundings, obviously.

[@LukeMcGuireoides]

Brilliant. I learned a good deal from this video :)

[@lost_boy]

This is a very important video. It's about time we, as a society, addressed the fact that most of our systems rely on the existence of free will: everything from education, to politics, healthcare and to the legal system. We have half of the political spectrum based on it's existence (center to far right) and major political parties basing their policies on it. Currently, the very system our entire planet is governed by, capitalism, would only make any sense at all if free will were to exist. It doesn't exist tho, so we're all trapped in a system that simply does not suit our biological nature. In fact, it's arguably downright damaging to our nature. Simply stating the truth about free will though isn't enough. We need to stop polluting the younger generations minds' with this garbage and give everyone a more accurate picture of how humans actually work.

[@MacAnters]

I am half-heartedly believing in materialism, but I've always kind of stopped thinking about the real-life consequences because I always get stuck on 'our entire legal system is based upon free will and that would collapse without that'. What would you propose a legal system that does not rely upon free will look like? I know this is a KZbin comment section, but you have typed out a lot already, so I might as well try and get a conversation going 😛

[@lost_boy]

@@MacAnters I appreciate your reply, so thank you for that. As for your question, what would a legal system that doesn't rely on free will existing look like, I would have to say I would imagine it would look like no legal system at all. Violent crime, addiction etc would all be dealt with as a public health issues.

[@MacAnters]

@@lost_boy what would that mean for crime prevention? I suppose one could easily say that it can't be prevented, as external factors drove them to commit what we deem as a crime. What would that mean for responsibility?

[@lost_boy]

@@MacAnters individual responsibility in a world without free will is an unnecessary concept. Crime prevention would, again, be largely a public health issue. I imagine a more sensible way of distributing resources would be a great start in crime prevention.

[@NinjaLobsterStudios]

@@MacAnters It means how we understand responsibility needs to change. The strawman implication would be the jump to the abolition of responsibility, that no one can be held responsible for anything, which is immediately dismissed as nonsense. However, we can still assign responsibility in the literal, material sense: they did the thing. We can then recognize how their choices were affected/limited to inform our analysis of what to do next. If the action is undesirable, the goal should be to identify the circumstances that drive the action and alleviate them.

[@suzannecarter445]

I reread the last chapter of Freedom Regained last night and then thought long and hard about what I actually believed about freewill which I've never articulated to myself and never even read (in its totality) but which seems to agree with Baggini's conclusions. It seems laughably obvious and simple so I don't know why I've never seen it expressed in this simple way, (would like your thoughts) There are only 3 things I (the awake conscious ego "I") can control: What I pay attention to (determines to a large extent what I experience) How I interpret my experience (determines to a large extent what my thoughts/feelings are about the experience) How I react to my experience (determines to a large extent the course of my life.)Most people do not actually experience free will because all 3 of these things are automatic (knee jerk, autopilot) although they are almost entirely under one's control. This is partly what people mean about "being present". That's it, the whole free will enchilada, to me. Am I missing something?

[@gdshMajestic8705]

Emergent property dualism + supervenience = free will Brains are just complex enough and uniquely configured enough to create this new kinda stuff -- mind/consciousness. This emergent property of mind/consciousness has a 'spooky' relationship with mere causation and can supervene if and when it chooses to. Everything else is basically dispositional to the mind.

[@addammadd]

I have settled for now on a probabilistic universe whose causality is more or less deterministic depending on locality (by this I mean scale). So at my body’s scale, the universe practically deterministic. But at the scale of my neurons, causality gets funny with all the quantum tunneling and such, ergo more opportunities for highly unlikely but still possible contradictions to otherwise causal relationships. Ergo, I’ve settled on a kind of free will by the sheer number of possible chances for neuronal defiance of causality within an otherwise deterministic universe at the scale of my body. In that vane, willpower is better described as opportunities to effect change and can be developed with experience and supported by Skinner’s behavioral regime (antecedent, behavior, consequence).

[@aaron2709]

Nice. Our narrator said "cause and effect are fundamental", which is not true in physics as equations are symmetrical (forwards/backwards) in time.

[@adlsfreund]

I also highly recommend watching a talk by German neuropsychiatrist Prof. Dr. Dr. Manfred Spitzer. There's a bunch of them here on KZbin and one is even in English. He goes over a ton of interesting insights, including a bit about motivation, with a particular focus on modern media consumption/overuse. His talk in English is titled "Digital Dementia". There's an audience Q&A at the end worth listening to as well.

[@insom_anim]

I always thought it was strange how we talk about free will when it comes to a set of two moral choices. Isn't the bad choice just as free/unfree as the good one? Eating the cake is as much a willed option as filling a job offer; but somehow free will isn't agnostic on morality, shame, etc.

[@PilgrimVisions]

Only if you take a strictly libertarian view of free will. As Waller mentions in this video, free will is classically understood to be rational ability to choose the good. A choice of the bad or less-good is by definition irrational and therefore must be due to either ignorance or surrender to what is not your reason--namely, your passions/desires, which spring (in Platonic and Christian anthropology) from the lower part of your soul and are not generally speaking the best guides for action. Within this paradigm, which lingers despite the "withering away" of conscious premodern anthropology, only good or wise actions are fully free.

[@Densoro]

Even if the universe was somehow illogically non-deterministic, 'free will' would mean 'making one's choices in keeping with one's Motives.' The fact that we have Motives for our choices in our causal universe, then, doesn't preclude free will. It is the will we have to put those Motives into action. The way I see it, Motives are not overlords who _coerce us_ into doing things on their behalf, but tools which _we apply_ to our circumstance. At the same time, we may not have the Means to perform those choices _successfully._ I can 'choose' to jump over the moon, but lacking the Means, I will fall far short. This does not erase the 'choice' from having occurred within my mind, the moment when I gave myself the go-ahead. If I have a medical condition that leaves me perpetually exhausted, I may put that Motive aside and continue pretending that I can be productive because my other Motive to provide for my mom and sister seems more important. I put on a brave face and keep coming into work each day. Then, when I lose that job because I don't have the material Means to overcome my exhaustion and excel, I may reevaluate. Take a leave of absence, focus on rehabilitation, have lazy days where I'm barely coping -- given the pressures on me, people may forgive this. They're obliged to ask themselves, 'is it reasonable for me to expect him to keep dragging himself tooth-and-nail through each day, when that just made his illness worse? Or would it be kinder _and more productive_ to let him rest?' It makes more sense to me, to think in terms of 'the pressures a person is under' rather than 'the invisible buttons that mind-controlled them.'

[@DanielBeddingfield493]

"It is the will we have to put those Motives into action." But what motivates us to put motives into action? You didn't create or pre-select the mechanisms you use for decision-making. It's as simple as that.

[@Densoro]

@@DanielBeddingfield493 We use our knowledge to find the most convincing choice. Our knowledge does not _make us_ do things; it convinces us that those things are worth doing. We still must be convinced in order to act.

[@DanielBeddingfield493]

@@Densoro But you didn't choose what you would find convincing, either. Everything you find convincing is made so by a combination of the world around you, and your interpretation of it. If you lack the capacity for critical thinking due to some educational or congenital failing, because of lead in the water, because of any reason... what choice did you have about that? Making good choices _is_ important. In order to do that, we should acknowledge our limitations honestly. When we overestimate our own powers of self-influence, we make choices and create systems that are guaranteed to cause unnecessary heartbreak.

[@Densoro]

@@DanielBeddingfield493 You've described a lack of Means. That can exist with free will; a person can choose a course of action, even if they don't have the resources to see it through to success. This does not negate the moment of choice within the brain. 'Our interpretation of the world' _is us._ It is not a thing separate from us. This disagreement seems to come down to a Dualist view of the brain and the mind, where the items within our minds are framed as an outside force that is making choices _instead of our selves._ But the mind _is the brain and is the self,_ so any choice we make _is made by our selves._ Reasons for our actions don't _inflict themselves_ on us; we accept them into our minds, our selves. We can be mindful of barriers to action, including coercion and scarcity, without presuming that some other 'not-our-self' is selecting our self's actions for us.

[@DanielBeddingfield493]

@@Densoro I think you've misunderstood my point. It's not that some other 'not-our-self' is selecting our _actions_ for us; the self itself was selected for us, and continues to be shaped, by internal and external systems that we do not control or understand. That doesn't invalidate the concept of voluntary action, which I think is what you're referring to. But it does conclusively disprove the idea that your decisions originate with you. From a causal perspective, "selves" don't hold any explanatory power; we're just pieces of a larger causal system that we cannot escape.

[@pocketsand6776]

Great video, T&N. I'm still deciding on my honors thesis question for next year. I'm interested in new forms of masculinity online, how they shape and preoccupy alt-right spaces... any tips on where I might begin?

[@andrewbenbow9257]

Within context, each individual interaction is a cause in inferences, but also in recollect each of these deciding moments are at once speculative in the reported self evident as we as causal analysis.gow hard the interpretation unto philosophy... how engrained is the psychology.

[@ramy701]

awesome video! may i ask where the very nice bg music at 17:00 is from?

[@ruthtruswell2170]

Thank you love this channel

[@da4]

Human beings belief in free will is critical for the continuation of the current state of slavery that humanity exists within. It is a paradigm that persists because the use of the tools to “know” can only create outcomes that perpetuate our condition. To see the trap and continue looking for a way out is a symptom of ongoing affliction

[@armchairecon]

Excellent content.

[@are_you_f_serious]

Hmm, have too many options can some people absolutely overwhelm. - For so long I can remember .. i never knew what I wanted because anything i ever was told, was that it can be anything. If it can be anything, how should I be able to know what exactly I want? I don't even know everything, what is when the only things which I want is always that what i don't know. - A little lead for some of us would be cool. Now, I'm an adult and have absolutely nothing archived ..

[@aoshinn]

A point I rarely see discussed on the topic of "choice" is that, some choices are void of any will whatsoever. Oportunities are the most important thing when it comes to choice. You can't choose (or even like) something you don't have access, or even don't know. I mean, a poor person cannot - normally - choose to eat caviar, therefore can't essentially like it. Yes, this person can create an imaginary construct of what caviar is like and firmly believe it, but that's not really caviar, is it? Or maybe this person could even have a random event happen to it that provides access to caviar at some point. But THAT is an opportunity. Most political discussions about choice really don't take this into account, which only really benefits who stands privileged and keep the oppression foot over the needed.

[@wendyleeconnelly2939]

In many case OPTIONS are not available to us, such as the option to eat caviar. However, if faced with the choice whether to hit or shoot someone or walk away, the reality is you can take an action or refrain from it. You can choose to refrain from harmful acts, even if you cannot acquire caviar.

[@ottofrinta7115]

Does the concept of an individual even make sense without free will? The individual is a notion that there is some separate identity in each body having an experience and being an agent in the world. Well without free will anyone having any experience is merely an illusion, there is only the experience, there is no separation from the environment and nobody is making any actions, it all just happens. There is no meaning because there is nobody to really bring any meaning. The implications of that are something to think about as well...

[@Loregamorl]

I have a weird nearly contradictory view on free will. For the purposes of the world at large, history, etc I believe it is deterministic. That everything has led up to this moment and was sort of preordained if youd like that word. But also I still feel I have a "free will" so to speak. That I make my decisions and have an immense amount of control over how things can go (either through action or inaction). And when I think about it thats the best way I can put it, its not exactly how I feel about it but its close enough.

[@agnesbuschman443]

I feel like it's more nuanced than this, or maybe simpler. One good way of examining a common fenomen is looking at where it is missing, and I feel like the common experience of many neorodivergent people comes in handy here. I'm talking about executive disfunction. With executive disfunction, it is near impossible to do many necessary things, and it ain't the problem of knowledge or will. I am fully aware that I need to do something, I know how necessary it is and know I'm gonna regret it if I don't do it. I want to do it, I may even be something I like doing, like a hobby. Yet, I can't. My brain refuses to do it, and I may be sick with panic, knowing I need to do it now, and am just on my phone, trying to distract myself from the myriad of negative feeling I have because of not doing it. The things mentioned - rest, less stress, they help, somewhat. Yet, I could rest for months (I've tried) and it won't have a tenth of an effect that medicine has. So, if my free will comes in a bottle, can we call it free will? Or does that apply only to neurotypical people who actually have a choice?

[@adlsfreund]

Motivation: The less you do, the less you're able to do. Or, as the saying goes: need something done? Ask a _busy_ person.

[@Maageab]

I seems like a lot of philosophers start with the observation that free will and morality make no sense in a deterministic world, and then go on to ask 'so how could we redefine these baseless concepts to make them look still relevant?' The philosophers who go down this route never seem to want to ask the other more interesting question: 'why is it that we think we need tose concepts, despite their obvious baselesness? Who in our society really benefits from having these obscurantist concepts around? why is it that we sometimes redefine them to the point that they end up meaning the opposite of what they originally meant? Why are we so willing to tie our brains into a pretzel to keep these concepts around? It's like these philosophers aren't aware that notions of morality, responsibility, right and wrong and free will aren't universal but instead are political tools that have a historical beginning. They all seem to unquestioningly believe that because moral philosophy claims to inform us on how to do good, then nothing good can happen if we get rid of moral discourse. A good comparison can be made with the police: lets's say you grow up being told that the police exists to protect you. If one day you realize that the police hasn't always existed but that it was created by a ruling class of factory owners to control and exploit crowds of workers, do you conclude the police needs to be abolished, or do you conclude that we need to endlessly and fruitlessly reform the police in the hope that the institution will stop doing what it was created to do? And yet this is what most philosophers do when it comes to morality and free will.

[@levikittles1720]

Great video bro

[@noah5291]

lots of people in here seem to think that disbelief free will somehow negates will. this is nonsensical

[@emanym]

It is by will alone that my thoughts begin to move.

[@brendanramsey8311]

The seat of subjectivity in Lacanian Psychoanalysis is (reductively described) the creation of meaning from non-meaning, or the attribution of meaning to signifiers which are initially meaningless. This produces a mysterious variety of subjective “events” within the symbolic register of the person/analysand. So the view that “free will” arises in our communications/miscommunications isn’t exactly wrong, although a bit off the mark.

[@BrassicaRappa]

HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!!

[@HaxorSerialKiller]

the goat hits again

[@JS-dt1tn]

You're correct to say that, obviously, free will exists within the social landscape, but that is only from the perspective of the unfree, like yourself and myself. Quite literally, those in ancient times who represented THE free will did not neccessarily observe themselves as within it; Heraclitus for example, as someone who observed themselves outside of the moral, social, economic order of those poor conditioned folks. He had the power, hence the free will to distance himself from that. He possessed the pathos of distance which is the psychological ancestor of the concept THE free will. Its not hard.

[@griffinsdad9820]

If the controller wasn't a prop foiling your point and you do game and also play eso then let me know your tag or guild so we can raid together. It would be so fun, maybe super fun. Cool channel. Really like your breakdowns, especially your difference and repetition clip. Thx

[@ReynaSingh]

Ok let’s say free will is an illusion. Now what? How do we operate a society without presupposing that people are accountable for their choices?

[@Bakedgoodza]

Well the lack of free will logically leads to moral relativism. This is very complicated but my question to you is why do you want a "functional society". Because it satisfys your desires. For example, priests can choose between celabicy or sex. Because they believe the assumption of God and afterlife, they pick celabicy because they want the afterlife more. Sacrifice is an illusion, all actions are attempts to satisfy inherent desire. Because I want to feel good and people to like me, I give to charity. We evolved to get dopamine from social participation. Your politics are an extension of your Hedonistic desires and goals. In short, your desires and how you choose to satisfy them are your morals. Get it?

[@BrianBors]

That is a large question to answer. It also sort of depends what you mean with "accountable". You might still need prisons for example. Not because punishment is justice, but because punishment will influence people to better their behaviour. That might still be "accountability" in some sense.

[@ssach7]

@@BrianBors However research shows that the fear of incarceration isnt as effective as establishing social changes that improve society and reduce the root of crime. This is why USA with 3 million prisoners has a higher crime rate than Denmark

[@ronwisegamgee]

The dark side of a paradigm of being completely accountable for your choices is that you deserve everything that happens to you. That's the justification of a predator and of a con man. "Shouldn't have dressed that way if you didn't want to get sexually assaulted." "Should've seen that coming if you didn't want to get swindled out of thousands of dollars." We are how we are due to a combination of genetics and environment. It feels righteous giving people their comeuppance, but it's an impulse born of a truncated view of human psychology. Rather than focusing on retribution, why not focus on restoration, understanding, and remediation?

[@coldhot367]

Good content in this channel

[@lifeonanotherplanet]

Thought this was quite a good way of thinking about it ... JOSCHA BACH: 'Like consciousness, free will is often misunderstood because we know it by reference. But it's difficult to know it by content, what you really mean by free will. A lot of people will immediately feel that free will is related to whether the universe is deterministic, or probabilistic. And while physics has some ideas about that, which change every now and then, it's not part of our experience. And I don't think it makes a difference if the universe forces you randomly to do things, or deterministically. The important thing seems to me that in free will you are responsible for your actions. And responsibility is a social interface. For instance, if I am told that if I do X I go to prison and this changes my decision to whether or not to do X, I'm obviously responsible for my decision because it was an appeal to my responsibility, in some sense. Or likewise, if I do a certain thing that it causes harm to other people and I don't want that harm to happen, that influences my decision. This is a discourse of decision-making that I would call it's a free will decision. Will is the representation that my nervous system, at any level of its functioning, has raised a motive to an intention. It has committed to a particular kind of goal and it gets integrated into the story of myself. This protocol that I experience as myself in this world. And that was what I experienced as well, as a real decision. And this decision is free in as much as this decision can be influenced by discourse.'

[@Tetragrammaton22]

I've thought about this a lot. I think that we have no true "free will." That every single thing we do, who we are as people, is a product of our cumulative and collective influences. We are, after all, born as a mostly blank slate. Genetic inclination toward or away from one thing or another aside, the choices we make are the latest in a long chain of influences that came before it. I don't think these things are naturally present within all humans, as people's experiences and influences are rarely exactly the same. Even when two people experience the exact same thing, the preceding experiences (influences) would change how they perceive that new, shared experience. Essentially I think that we are the only thing that is not responsible for who we are and our actions, preferences, etc.. Each influence informs upon the next, and our ability to make certain choices is only as a result of those cumulative influences.

[@beer_4781]

even genetic inclination isn't one's own responsibility

[@stefanmanojlovic5716]

good job

[@comradefreedom8275]

I'm personally a compatibilist.

[@aaron2709]

It's the only sensible option.

[@comradefreedom8275]

@@aaron2709 Thank you.

[@Densoro]

Hell yeah. People talk about our brains 'choosing for us' as though we're two separate entities, and not _literally our brains._ If 'my brain' selected a choice, based on what I know, _that is me doing the choosing._ My knowledge and my choices are influenced my experiences, but I'm still the one who weighs that information and settles on a response.

[@RhizometricReality]

"Freedom is not a given-and it’s certainly not given by anything ‘natural’. The construction of freedom involves not less but more alienation; alienation is the labour of freedom’s construction. Nothing should be accepted as fixed, permanent, or ‘given’-neither material conditions nor social forms."

[@grekerbeer948]

Is determinism essentially materialistic?

[@Ba-pb8ul]

nope. Not always. Cohen's analytical Marxism, for example, is fairly individualistic. Early Marxism (Grundise) is highly inflected by Hegel. Western Marxism investigates how materialism/modernity releases the very tools for critical thinking, with the inference of a response.

[@grekerbeer948]

@@Ba-pb8ul Thanks. I now know how much reading i have to do. I attended a talk once, called ''Does science leave room for Free Will''. The speaker, a monk-physicist, argued for the thesis. I am wondering whether the scientific rationalism, so present these days, allows spirit or anything beyond mere utilitarianism

[@moonshoes11]

@@grekerbeer948 I recall seeing a study that shows decisions being made in the brain before we are consciously aware of the choice, and our consciousness just fills in a rationalization post hoc. If this is the case, that would change what free will means, I think. Steichen seems to be about methodological naturalism, but not philosophical naturalism. In other words, dream up any solution you think applies, but then confirm it before accepting it.

[@kevincurrie-knight3267]

For the past few years, I've been reading a lot in Buddhist and Taoist philosophy. And I've been really interested in the philosopher/translator Jay Garfield's idea that there is no corrolary to 'free will' anywhere in these philosophies, and when he translates Western writings on it for Eastern audiences in these traditions, he has to do a lot of explaining, for the term just doesn't translate. (As far as I can see, he's probably right. The Buddhist notion of dependent arising leaves no real room for free will or - as westerners understand it - determinism.) Other historians have noted similarly that free will is a very uniquely Christian idea that had to do, if I recall, with having to explain The Fall and how it is that we are created in God's image but the idea of sin can still exist in us and the world.

[@kevincurrie-knight3267]

@@thotslayer9914, Yes, dependent arising simply can't be understood as either a sort of free will+ or determinism+ . It's something wholly different, maybe more compatiblist, but even most compatiblisms read as if they are just free will+determinism in a way that bifurcates in a way I don't think dependent arising does. DA is hard for me to understand, but I think I am understanding it this way, and let's see if it makes sense: when we ask whether we are free or detremined, we see two discreet variables - the person and their surroundings - and want somewhere to 'start' the story of which acts on which first (or in a way that is the primary driver). DA refuses to tell that linear story or make those divissions: all is dependent on all, and that means that as I am dependent on what is around me (and those are wholly conventional divisions for Buddhists, not ontological ones), all is affected by me AT THE SAME TIME AND TO THE SAME DEGREE... to the point where differentiation and figuring out what is 'really' in charge is literally beside the point.

[@AlexGoldhill]

That's very close to the Jewish view of Free Will. In Judaism the human soul consists of two parts, the Yetzer Hara, or Evil Inclination, and the Yetzer Haor, the Good Inclination. It could also be seen as the drive towards selfishness and selflessness or away and towards sin, which in Judaism is seen as missing the mark or going off the path instead of an inherent stain on your character. Free will consists of being able to choose between these two forces and the more one is chosen and acted on the stronger it becomes. In the long-run the purpose of humanity as a whole, and the Jews in particular, is to shift that balance away from sin and towards righteousness until the world is in such a state that the conditions that allow people to actively choose between sinning and not-sinning are impossible, though there would still be the potential for accidental sins that aren't consciously chosen.

[@philosophicsblog]

Love your content, mate. But I can't help to say that I was somewhat disappointed to have seen the subject when I was posting my own content on a, let's say, very similar topic. No matter.

[@adcaptandumvulgus4252]

Also, interesting opinion on a greatly debated topic.

[@Rahshu]

I'm completely confused. What the hell does willpower have to do with free will? What you described just sounds like a soft form of coercion: you're only free to make "right choices" that are beneficial to others, and your own preferences are irrelevant if they only help you. At least, that's what this sounds like to me. Seriously, what's wrong with resting, playing, or enjoying the occasional sweet? And where do the politics come in as promised in the title? I feel like I've somehow completely missed the message here, but there it is.

[@mistersmarteleimon1500]

happy birthday!

[@mistersmarteleimon1500]

god damnit

[@thoughtful1233]

I haven't even watched the full video... but I'm posting anyway that I've found that almost all compatibilist arguments are just calls for pragmatic lies. They tend to just obfuscate the problems of determinism one step/question further. I don't mind people who argue that it is normatively better for people to believe in free will, but I want them to acknowledge off the bat that free will doesn't exist or at least be honestly mistaken and not try to make convenience a method.

[@aaron2709]

I suggest listening to Sean Carroll on this subject.

[@thoughtful1233]

@@aaron2709 I've listened to Sean Caroll before, I'll give him a try on this subject, too.

[@thoughtful1233]

@@thotslayer9914 I intend to. I know he's difficult, though, and I want to read Spinoza and Kant first. I'll get there eventually.

[@RekzaFS]

Go watch this presentation by Daniel Dennett then compatibilism will make sense to you m.kzbin.info/www/bejne/fmncYWijesd5hcU (skip the first 20 min)

[@InsanityPlusOne]

The free will to have that extra birthday and not care is a pretty dope place to be.

[@brendanramsey8311]

I once had a hard-determinist view, and I only escaped that sort of thinking by way of Lacan, and the wonderful book by Bruce Fink “The Lacanian Subject: Between Language and Jouissance” which really provides a firm place for subjectivity, with all of it’s implicit mysteries.

[@musamusashi]

This is a very complex issue, in my view it is us who set the boundaries of our own free will, within the boundaries that our Creator has set for each one of us. For example, i may in theory go out and murder an innocent person, by my conscience would not conceive, let alone allow, doing that. Another person does it without even blinking, sadly.

[@chriswest8389]

" Soup. More soup boy? "Why, mr. Bummble, its lipton chicken noodle, the boys favorite.".