Peter Hacker on the Mind, Neuroscience, Free Will

[@kaffeephilosophy]

Brilliant display of knowledge by Dr. Hacker. Sadly, the interviewer was not competent enough to ask the real interesting questions.

[@David-sb3bd]

Professor Hacker is brilliant!

[@BAZhompa]

Doesn’t it beg the question to say that we have the capacity for free will, for this is not a brute fact that one can simply proclaim, this is the very thing that is in question and that philosophers have set out to prove… I agree that without clearly understanding what is meant by “voluntary action” and “free will”, we can never obtain any useful empirical evidence from such tests as the Libet Test, yet even Hacker appears to be unable to define or explain the difference between these two terms clearly here, and as a result takes for granted that the two are separate notions/concepts… What is voluntary action ? Does it not relate to the capacity to choose otherwise or enact our free will? And with regards to the experiments conducted on the sea slugs, the problem is the equivocal use of the word “memory”… Philosophers could use a separate term or name for conscious memory to distinguish it from biological memory, etc…

[@joedonovan3820]

Will we ever see an interview with Peter Hacker on American TV? Fat chance!!!!!

[@Existentialist946]

Just to point out that we don't even know if the brain is necessary to see, think etc. A quick analogy. When a man is in a house, in order to see the sky the house has to have windows, the windows need to be clean, the curtains open etc. So the house needs to be in a certain state in order to make it possible for the man to see the sky. However, the house plays no role in *creating* the man's vision. After all, the man can simply go outside and have a unrestricted view of the sky. For those who are interested I have written a relevant blog post: ian-wardell.blogspot.com/2018/11/can-we-really-be-so-certain-theres-no.html

[@MontyCantsin5]

1:50: Patrick Churchland? It should be Paul Churchland, surely.

[@somebodyelse5784]

+Monty Cantsin Patricia Churchland

[@MontyCantsin5]

+Somebodyelse: Hacker mentions Pat Churchland after having said Patrick Churchland.

[@sheafisher3578]

Indeed, you're correct Monty. He meant Paul, not Patrick.

[@MrRGipps]

Ironic how at 4:19 Hacker says "so far I've made no slips of the tongue"!

[@MontyCantsin5]

@@MrRGipps: Ha!

[@glomerol8300]

~ The Singularity Is Still Here ~ Does the universe have free will? If the universe is alive and conscious through us and its other creatures, whether here or on other planets-- and all entangled in realtime, far faster than light-- are those conversations, in a very real sense, conversations of the universe with and within itself? If the universe has free will, then do we if we are the universe? What is a thought, a dream? Where do they go? How can they be quantified? What can determinism mean in the fundamental context of infinity and realtime entanglement across distances that may not actually be distant at all, but in the same place, within a singularity?

[@Mimrie]

This is the fallacy of composition, just because all creatures are alive, it does not mean that they are collectively alive.

[@mariebrochumariebrochu5678]

Peter should read recent neurological science books E g innate k l Mitchell

[@Open-6]

Which author did he say fed the book to his dog?

[@sk8shred]

Victor Lamme, a Dutch neuroscientist

[@DreamlessSleepwalker]

@@sk8shred Victor Lame*

[@aneurindavies5943]

Let's hope President Butcher Joseph Robin Biden Jnr is listening to this talk, on the other hand do not expect too much!

[@glomerol8300]

1. If there is uncertainty, then one cannot say with certainty that we don't have free will. 2. There is uncertainty. (Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle) 3. Therefore, we cannot say with certainty that we don't have free will.

[@georgechristou7982]

Animals have free will too

[@nikatkeshelashvili6801]

yeah! and your dog choose you to love, great choice

[@TheDrZandi]

I found the actual paper Kandel published: www.cell.com/neuron/fulltext/S0896-6273(02)01129-7 To any scientifically literate person who reads this paper it is blatantly obvious Kandel has made progress in the field of memory formation. Peter Hacker simply does not know what he is talking about.

[@limegreenspeed]

Simply linking to an article and alleging Hacker does not know what he's talking about is not a form of argumentation, please address his criticisms rather than appeal to the very work Hacker criticizes to defend your opinion. Peter Hacker has written both articles and books with renowned neuroscientists and has been published in academic journals. His expertise lies not in the empirical study of brains and neurons but in the conceptual terms used by both philosophers and psychologists (taken broadly), and his criticism is therefore unrelated to any study and its findings, only its defined terms and what the authors take their findings to show. In the video Hacker quotes the definition of memory used by Kendel (Milner, B., Squire, L. R. and Kandel, E. R., 1998. Cognitive neuroscience and the study of memory. Neuron 20, 445-68.) and illustrates how this definition is quite clearly insufficient (no neuroscientist would admit limping is a form of memory), a reflex action is not learned (not acquired) and the increase in the speed of a reflex action is not a new form of behaviour, just the same behaviour repeated at a faster rate (is running a mile one second faster a form of memory?).

[@ustylista]

Hurrah, the first sensible post in this thread (M Verk)

[@ustylista]

Not-yet-Dr. Zandi your criticisms are unfounded and unsubstantiated, saying "wrong, wrong, wrong" is not a useful strategy for progressing the debate around conceptual frameworks that is being discussed here.

[@TheDrZandi]

I typed out a whole thing, but I accidentally closed the tab without posting it. Suffice it to say Peter Hacker misrepresents the ideas of the people he's arguing against, he claims Nobel prize-winning work is irrelevant to the subject it claims to be (a blatant lie), and goes on to say humans have souls because of language. Language evolved slowly from more chimp- or ape-like sounds from our distant ancestors Australopithecus afarensis to our more recent more human-like ancestors Homo neanderthalensis. At which point did the soul come about? He argues animals don't have this because they can't reflect on their actions and see them as good or bad, despite the generations-old ideas of Pavlov. He claims that a mechanistic view of the brain is flawed because it implies a lack of responsibility of one's actions which is completely misrepresented. In-between misrepresenting others' ideas, Peter goes on occasional tangents explaining that words have multiple definitions. He explains that while he doesn't believe we have a soul that leaves our body and goes somewhere when we die, he believes of it more as a capacity like the ability to sense temperature. He says that while he doesn't believe in one definition of the word, he likes other definitions. He does the same with consciousness later. I get the overall impression he didn't think his own arguments through, or he is ignorant of some of the most important research to human history which have come about in the past 60 years.

[@Gytax0]

+Dr. Zandi I agree. It doesn't make any sense to say 'here, this primate A does not have a soul but this primate B which originated from primate A has a soul'. A continuity problem arises.

[@Gytax0]

***** That's what I implied. There's discontinuity in the emergence of soul using this model.

[@TheDrZandi]

***** You misunderstand; +Gytax0 was correct in his analogy.

[@henriquemendes7938]

I understand your point and I think it is valid. However, the idea that language evolved gradually among our apelike ancestors is nowadays in disfavour in academic circles. Chomsky's theories and (I believe) empirical data seem to point towards a different direction: the ability to speak was not slowly developed, but it actually appeared rather suddenly among Homo sapiens as a result of genetic mutation.

[@ustylista]

It is ironic that in your posting about Hacker misunderstanding and misrepresenting others you have misunderstood and misrepresented his explanations. Perhaps you could read this if you have time: www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/1119440467/ref=ox_sc_act_title_1?smid=AM8HWG5JVWH5J&psc=1