The Freewill Delusion | Freedom, Determinism, and Compatibilism

[@unsolicitedadvice9198]

LINKS AND CORRECTIONS: If you want to work with an experienced study coach teaching maths, philosophy, and study skills then book your session at [e-mail]. Previous clients include students at the University of Cambridge and the LSE. Support me on Patreon here: patreon.com/UnsolicitedAdvice701?Link& Sign up to my email list for more philosophy to improve your life: forms.gle/YYfaCaiQw9r6YfkN7

[@ReadtoFilth]

I signed up for your email list but I haven’t got anything yet?

[@CJusticeHappen21]

I have level 2 Free Will. So, I have Free Will, but only on weekends, and weekdays between the hours of 6AM through to 8AM, and 4PM and 10PM.

[@unsolicitedadvice9198]

I know this may be tongue-in-cheek but I think this is a great illustration of why we might need to ask the question of "what do degrees of freedom look like in determinism?" Because some situations seem like they are free-er than others

[@CJusticeHappen21]

@@unsolicitedadvice9198 I agree. A conceptualization I once heard was that our free will is like that of a dog who is tied on a long rope to the back of a cart being pulled by a horse. The rope is long enough that we can roam fairly far away, but eventually we hit our limit and get dragged back to the trail.

[@davidomeally6416]

We have free will and there is nothing we can do about it.

[@TheJoshestWhite]

​@@davidomeally6416or do we!?

[@muppetonmeds]

Are you saying you are married?

[@shaanlol]

babe wake up, new Unsolicited Advice video just dropped.

[@unsolicitedadvice9198]

Haha! I am flattered to be featured in this text-format

[@MrWatchowtnow]

Shut up nerd , I'm cheating on you with Jerome , he's a rapper.

[@TwoDudesPhilosophy]

My decision to click on your videos is always out of free wil! Great video, keep it up! 🥳

[@unsolicitedadvice9198]

Thank you! I am glad you liked it

[@peterwilson1295]

No, it isn’t. If you’re a truth seeker, honest & authentic. You had no other choice.

[@peterwilson1295]

@michahcc You asking me? If so, the context is the state of mind or the intentions/desires of the heart. So, can one just choose out of that? Yes, possibly, but not very likely. But then, something less or dissatisfying would be in control.. Or we get to choose by what we would rather be controlled by, But not to be uncontrolled. Not yet anyway.

[@sigmachadtrillioniare6372]

​@@peterwilson1295U clearly didn't watch the video. Refer to the 4th part

[@peterwilson1295]

@@sigmachadtrillioniare6372 While true, I watched the whole video now, and nothing disturbed my initial reply. Trying to think thru free will/freedom is always a “chasing your tail” proposition. Did you wear a mask or take the vax during the coof? Freewil/ agency is not “free” without sacrifice to the individual. What context do you need? We are here in this world for a very short period of time.. That’s a context. You will never fully escape control, or to quote some other great mind, “Death is the end of illusion”.

[@franktodd3247]

I really enjoy the idea of the conflicting will, with what we may call “degrees of freedom”. In practice, I do find that sometimes having more options, perhaps too many, can restrain my ability to act. Perhaps too much freedom is counterproductive.

[@WeaponXwastaken]

The thought that is burning in me during this video is, how do we know someone could choose otherwise? We never choose anything other than.. what we choose. You can say you wanted to go to the cinema, but end up going to the zoo. Why are we assuming you ever actually had a choice to go to the cinema? To me this is the illusion of free will. There is no version of events where i want to go to the cinema, something happens, i go to the zoo, but i actually am at the cinema. I always end up at the zoo, to me theres no evidence i had a choice at all. How i think of free will (and our lack of it), putting a gun to my head forcing me to the cinema is no different than me having had a traumatic experience at a zoo as a child leaving me averse, or simply not having access to a zoo, or any other reason i dont go to the zoo. In all examples i dont go to the zoo simply because of a culmination of every moment of my life including present variables. Idk if this is outside the point of this video but i couldnt stop thinking about it lol

[@Maxrodon]

I think Freeewill exists in a world with determinism depening on how we "define" free will. If one thinks we are truly independent with the thoughts/decisions we make, then I respectfully think they have the "illusion" of free will. However if we interpret Freewill as being "self-aware" I can agree with that. I firmly believe there is nothing "random" that drives our thoughts and nothign random in this universe. Rather there are variables/factors that are less well understood or unknown to us but doesn't mean those factos don't exist. A very simple example of my meaning is how Weather was random to us until we understood how it worked and now we can predict it's behaviour because we know there is a "cause and effect" which informs our weather forecasts. This cause and effect understanding is the same way we can use it to predict what would happen if we threw an object or what would happen when you put a fire under a pot of water or what would happen after star explodes. So long as we know the starting conditions and what formula to apply, you will get an accurate prediction on the outcome. This cause and effect approach is the same with our thought process. Each person's brain is like a playbook that has instructions saying if inputs "x" and based on conditions "y" then do Z. What this means is that if you had an infinite number of clones of yourself that all lived in parallel universes that were exactly the same as yours with events and conditions all being exactly the same, at no point would any clones decision be different. So in all those parallel instances the outcome would be the same because the conditions were precisely the same. In order for decisions to be different, it means a condition changed somewhere. Our brains is like a super computer and is crafted by enviromental and biological conditions that we do not control. If you knew all the conditions for how my brain worked and had a formula to apply, you can predict every decision I would ever make due to cause and effect. So me thinking my decision was "freewill" is an illusion beacuse freewill would mean nothing can predict my thought, it's all truly free, when in reality it's all determined by conditions that lead up to it. And those conditions were caused by previous conditions and so on to the start of the universe. So eveything after the bing bang be it the earth forming, dinosaurs getting extinct, man going to the moon, you jerking off, was always pre-determined to happen. If you knew thre right forumla to use and had all the right variables to apply to it at the start of big bang all these things and life events can be predicted accurately. So nothing is free, we are rather just part of the ride and are free to be aware of it rather than free to change it.

[@juanlongoria4827]

Absolutely absurd how you don’t have a larger audience. Your explanation on philosophical ideas and on novelist is so fluent and poetic

[@theunknown8203]

I was programmed at birth to like these types of videos against my will, therefore I was destined to click on this wonderful video.

[@BreakingTheMatrix-cc1ct]

There's some truth in comedy😂😂

[@Roryfitzpatrick8]

Or you built a tolerance through traumatic perception on them & now have habit for clicking on them for answers

[@Thebossatmserfgsd]

must be nice I was pressured coerced and intimidated into watching this 😪

[@collectiveunconscious222]

Agreed

[@thousand1183]

This video would have been a godsend to me when I wrote my AP Philosophy final in high school lol. I love the video, keep it up!!

[@Haqueip]

Always been amaze by your voice and your detailed explanation. Im just obsessed on it😖😖.

[@unsolicitedadvice9198]

Thank you! That’s very kind!

[@mbmurphy777]

By the way, great video. I think this is one of the best treatments on the subject that I’ve seen on, KZbin!

[@unsolicitedadvice9198]

Thank you! I am really glad you enjoyed it

[@mbmurphy777]

@@unsolicitedadvice9198 well it’s not just that I enjoy it. It’s that I think your communication style is very effective and makes it easy to or easier to pick up the nuances of these types of issues. Keep up the good work!

[@alicewright4322]

we are married to the idea that we have free will in our egos. for others the dissonance of reward and punishment in a choiceless reality push them to believe in free will. I think the people who do not believe in free will are just frustrated, while those that believe in free will are threatened by this debate.

[@sigmachadtrillioniare6372]

People who do not believe in free will, often determinists are also people without answers. They just Clinge to something to for intellectual satisfaction

[@gerinko7874]

Haven’t watched this yet. Don’t care if I don’t have free will. I’ll choose what I want, and if that choice was guaranteed from the start, what does it change? The choice was still made.

[@divyanshkashyap3938]

More power to you

[@TwoDudesPhilosophy]

The "while charming" cracked me up!

[@unsolicitedadvice9198]

Haha! Thank you. I did want to clarify as otherwise it can get a bit confusing

[@Chunkieta]

No one had called me that before

[@Robertsmith-un5cu]

You’re a biological automaton. You are merely aware of your thoughts and emotions generated by your brain automatically based on previous experiences and how they’ve modified your brain structure.

[@weallneedjustice]

Here's a thought on the idea of free will... 1.Who chose your birth name? 2.Did you choose where you were born or the culture you were raised in? 3.How much of your daily thoughts and decisions are influenced by unconscious biases and social pressures? 4.Can you decide what you find enjoyable or distasteful, or are these preferences instilled in you by your genetics and experiences? 5.To what extent are your major life decisions (like your career or partner) truly free from the influence of your social environment and financial constraints? Reflecting on these questions, you can see that the canvas of our lives is pre-set in many ways. While we may paint within its bounds-sometimes even pushing at its edges-the initial outline is often not of our own making. This perspective doesn't wholly negate the concept of free will but suggests that the freedom we do has operates within a framework established by a myriad of uncontrollable forces.

[@TerryUniGeezerPeterson]

Using that logic, because you can't will yourself to fly, or grow 2 feet taller, or win the lottery, that it somehow proves we don't have free will. 😂

[@ComedyMatrixTV]

While external factors like genetics, upbringing, and social influences shape our lives, they do not eliminate free will. Influence is not the same as determinism; people often make choices that defy their backgrounds or societal expectations. Human beings possess the capacity for self-reflection and critical thinking, allowing them to recognize and challenge biases, make complex life decisions, and exercise moral responsibility. free will is a divine gift that operates within the framework of life's influences, providing the context but not fully constraining the capacity to choose. Thus, free will exists within a complex interplay of internal and external forces.

[@TerryUniGeezerPeterson]

@@ComedyMatrixTV "Devine gift"? Please cite empirical, verifiable evidence for your baseless assertion.

[@ComedyMatrixTV]

@@TerryUniGeezerPeterson The fact that we are conscious beings capable of reflecting on our existence, purpose, and the vastness of the universe suggests a divine origin. Consciousness is not just a biological function, but it allows us to ponder abstract concepts like morality, beauty, and meaning, which seem to transcend mere survival. This unique ability to question, seek purpose, and understand the universe is evidence that our existence is not random, pointing to a divine source that endowed us with the capacity for such deep introspection and awareness.

[@TerryUniGeezerPeterson]

@@ComedyMatrixTV nice word salad gish-galop, but you didn't answer my question. Arguments from ignorance don't cut it.

[@curious_problems]

My main issue with compatibilism is that our understanding of what is our will(according to its definition of free will) is continuously diminishing in the modern world. A few centuries back, society believed homosexuality was a choice but we now know for a fact that this is incorrect. Today, we still believe some things are in our control at the end of the day, but we truly have no idea which of these will get removed from our freedom. The study of psychology itself is setting up for the complete refutation of compatibilism. For example, an immoral person is treated as an immoral person and thus receives the punishment an immoral person should absolutely get, but people almost never actively choose to be immoral. That person could be who they are because of a bad upcoming, a negative experience, a psychological disorder or others. So, is it really up to that person to be immoral? This is one example, but we can also apply this for moral people. The same causes(general upcoming, experiences lived and mental health) can create a good person. Is it really up to that person to be moral?

[@davidclifford5124]

Whenever I listen to young philosophers, I’m always reminded of a book I once read by David Benatar called ‘Better never to have been’. I was astonished that someone in their right mind would want to argue that life is never worth living. I can certainly understand why some people reach a point in their lives, often tragically early on, when they decide that they have had enough and want to call it a day. But, for me, the idea that the experience of being alive is in some way intrinsically bad is incomprehensible. Needless to say, I was keen to get his book and consider his arguments which I thought would at least be interesting. Sadly, I wasted my money because his explanation was nothing short of nonsense. In particular, his arguments centred around an absurdly simplified view of what life actually is. Are all philosophers as foolish as he is, I asked myself. Thankfully, they aren’t. But I regularly come across so called philosophers that are close runners up and one is, in my view, Professor Robert Sapolsky. Now, my understanding of determinism is that, at the time when the planets were forming around our Sun four billion years ago, it was completely inevitable that I would be sitting here typing this comment. This is because the behaviour of every atom in the universe is subject to strict laws and that there is only one outcome at each successive second as to their relative positions and so on. Indeed, it is also the case that, although there is an uncertainty regarding the properties of sub-atomic particles as to their precise position and spin, this uncertainty evaporates as their combined positions are averaged out. In any event, it is something like that which doesn’t really interest me anyway. As a consequence, it could perhaps be possible for an experienced physicist to convince me that the universe was completely deterministic until the emergence of life. It is plausible, I suppose, that inorganic matter would have behaved strictly in accordance with fixed laws at all times. However, the emergence of life brought about an explosion in a level of complexity that would challenge the capacity of physical laws to completely control not just every atom but every cell that goes to make up the biological world in which we live. Four billion years later, many living creatures on Earth have evolved brains that have trillions of synapses, billions of neurons and countless electrical charges between them which, in the case of human beings, has enabled us to conceptualise situations that we experience, to identify possible alternative responses, to consider the possible outcomes of pursuing those various responses and evaluate the impact that those responses might have upon our fellow human beings. This capacity, like consciousness itself, has evolved over billions of years in response to the development of ‘competences’ as described in Daniel Dennet’s book, ‘From bacteria to Bach and Back’. ‘Thinking’ is not merely a physical or mechanical process subject to physical laws. Thoughts are, of course, ‘carried’ by electrical charges, as I understand it, across synapses but the information contained within the thoughts themselves are not controlled by ‘physical’ laws. Free will, in my view, is the innate capacity of most healthy human beings and, indeed, possibly some animals, to consider various available options for action and to make a judgement about what particular option to select. That selection is not, in my view, contingent upon physical laws and in this way, we are responsible, under normal circumstances for the choices that we make. Of course, there are plenty of influences on our decision-making that originate, as Sapolsky says, from our genetic endowment, our experiences in the womb and early childhood, the culture in which we grew up and the society in which we live and so on. However, they are ‘influential’. They do not determine our choices. We are capable of making choices based upon our own intellect. In any event, the argument against determinism has been put much more succinctly than I ever could and much more authoritatively by other experienced scientists and philosophers.

[@sorenkair]

you seem awfully confident in your views of the human consciousness, a field which is still highly contentious and probably will be for a very long time because it is difficult to study that which you cannot observe.

[@davidclifford5124]

@@sorenkair Not at all. I was expressing my opinion based on the information that I have been presented with. I’ve explained why I believe that most human beings have the capacity for free will and why I find the case put by philosophers such as Professor Robert Sapolsky to be totally unconvincing. I say very little about consciousness itself beyond the obvious fact that it is an evolved capacity that most living creatures possess at some level. Incidentally, we are able to observe consciousness both our own and that of others.

[@antseanbheanbocht4993]

Perhaps you could review The adolescent by dostoyevsky as i believe he explores this very topic, free will in a changing world. I haven't read it myself i must confess, I'm duelling with the Brothers Karamazov at the moment.

[@unsolicitedadvice9198]

I would love to! I hope to have a video on Svidrigailov out by Sunday, but I will look at it for perhaps a video in the next couple of months

[@markkarris6607]

Your content is insightful and thought-provoking! Thank you. I truly appreciate the exploration of degrees of freedom and the idea of freedom existing on a spectrum. This concept significantly enriches the ongoing conversation. Nevertheless, it could be argued that regardless of our choices, the degrees of freedom are causally determined. I lean towards the perspective that we are phenomenologically free but objectively determined. The notion of a "will-based cause" introduces a sense of cognitive dissonance for me. It seems to portray this "will" as something exceptionally special, untainted by causal factors (though admittedly influenced and determined by them), and essentially just "us." However, despite the subjective feeling of such uniqueness, objectively, this doesn't seem to be the case. The idea of a "will" representing the true "us," making choices without external factors, appears contradictory. Every choice we make is intricately connected to the causal matrix in which we are embedded. Our "will" is essentially born from this causal web, and our degrees of freedom are causally determined. The proposition that our wills are shaped by both internal and external causes, and that our degrees of freedom are not entirely within our control, while simultaneously suggesting that we are free when engaging our causally determined will that is not independent of external factors, seems perplexing. It challenges my understanding, and the idea of our freedom being constrained by causality makes my brain hurt, lol..

[@katia-kk1qq]

J'ai reçament découvert cette chaîne youtube et j'adore le travail présenté. Aussi t'est trop mignon 🥰

[@PaulT65567]

"Stripey, carnivorous fiend" Brilliant!

[@Bf26fge]

An ability to act and to enjoy life does not require any synthesis between determinism and free will. One can act with purpose or no purpose in a state of happiness without such philosophical solutions to every conflicting or disturbing thought we have. Excessive thought and excessive search for answers to the unknowable keeps as just as confused and ignorant, just on a higher plane. Do. Do without conscious deliberation at times. Don't just think. Belief habits go hand in hand with existence actions, or they do when you free yourself from things holding you back. The pursuit of philosophical solutions is a worthy pursuit. This guy is awesome, but most of you also need to turn off the webz and get out more and F more b i c h e z and p i s s on more bushes. Balance peeps. You got this.

[@ritaparks2811]

best comment by far

[@peterwilson1295]

Still, I’m reminded of the Merovingian in the Matrix series. The discussion between him & Neo regarding the only decision factor vs choice, that being causality vs choice… Then a later discussion between agent Smith and Neo in a life and death struggle; “Why do you keep fighting , you’ve lost everything “ says Smith. “Because I choose to” said Neo Hmmm. Perhaps free will occurs after (only after) all attachments are released or lost.😮

[@DJWESG1]

The second is actually from the Greek parable of the hawk and sparrow.. 'why do you struggle..

[@peterwilson1295]

@@DJWESG1 👍

[@afterzanzibar]

I really like your videos and thank you for all the effort you put into scriptwriting and your editing and presentation. My one and only criticism would be to please slow down slightly in your speech to really let your sentences on these deep subjects sink in, if for nobody else but myself. Great videos all around.

[@LegibleW-vy7uq]

I have been taunted by an ethereal adversary since I can remember, that would approach me to instill a mishandling of my own choices. This I bounced out of my own determining and landed into a liminal space amongst the real world but with the fabrics of consciousness quite palpable.

[@NondescriptMammal]

It doesn't make sense to debate whether we have free will, without defining the term explicitly and unambiguously first. It's not a matter of whether someone "believes" in a certain definition of the term "free will"... Any debate about whether we have "free will" is utterly pointless, if the definition hasn't already been firmly agreed upon by the participants before the debate begins.

[@unvaccinatedamerican9620]

The conception of free will as a scale is correct. From the absolute perspective, relative things do not have free will. This is no different than saying that finite beings do not have infinite intelligence. But from the relative point of view, from which we experience reality, there exists the possibility of some degree of freedom of will. The degree of free will manifested by an individual depends on external and internal factors. Externally, coercion, deception, and stealth deprive people of free will choice. Internally, ignorance or confusion, i.e., the deficiency of knowledge or the inability to interpret it correctly through proper systematic reasoning to determine its truthfulness or falsity, or the lack of willpower to control one’s own impulses, emotions, and desires places one lower on the spectrum of free will. Other factors, such as tiredness and hunger, can influence the decision-making process, but they can be overcome by the exercising of will, as many people, such as special ops military personnel, have developed the ability to do. Willpower can be developed like a muscle. In short, free will is a spectrum, and one’s position on the spectrum is largely determined by the absence of external control by others, the ability to judge wisely based on knowledge and logic, and one’s ability to exercise self-control. All of these factors are changeable through education and the practice of self-restraint.

[@nodrog567]

An excellent book discussing free will is, “What Is Man”, by Mark Twain. Twain was definitely in the camp of no free will, and his book convinced me.

[@Nothing.321uf]

Your work is the Definition of quality and content....

[@AnonymousWon-uu5yn]

People are forced to think and do the types of things that their type of genetics and their types of life experiences program them to think and do throughout their life. Who and how someone happens to be is an extremely unfair unjust lottery that is dependent on what type of genetics that they happen to have and depending on what types of life experiences they happen to have throughout their life.

[@datinsky69]

Your fitst request is to ask someone to imagine something. How can someone decide to imagine or not if they have no free will?

[@lirich0]

reminds me of how Sartre began to reduce his radical freedom

[@bobxbaker]

It depends on what one would consider free will, Either one is free despite the inevitability of cause and causation or one is not free because of cause and causation.

[@양익서-g8j]

자유의지는 존재한다고 생각해요.이 그림이 자유의지를 위한 길이라고 생각합니다.

[@alangiaconelli2919]

This is the same old argument “what came first the chicken or the egg” But this determinant concept does point to God and His perfect use of it (holiness) vs man and his use of determinism. (Slave to sin) So this concept shows us where and by what God rules by. So where do you look for God if you want evidence of him? That question is for you big thinkers. Keep thinking long enough and it only will point to God.

[@EternalMetaphor]

I'm really interested in the further development of determinism, since there are convenient models to work around these days, and possibly to forge a theory that goes beyond "metaphysical" abstract arguments. To make determinism as epistemology of cause and effects, having the correct knowledge for decisions to determine outcomes by Intuition of these reasoning. The difference is turning a posteriori truth into disposal, arguably in prediction, it's the ultimate control of self oriented life and environment. More knowledge aids the cause of deterministic epistemology the intellectual sword and the genius wielder of it will no longer concern the ontological implications of hard/soft determinism, because the definition in itself is built by constant and dynamic force beyond innate perception

[@Post-Abusrd]

Been loving the videos! I've finally gotten around to reading Dostoevsky because of your videos. I think that since you are talking/staring directly into the camera, and thus, straight at me, gives the whole video a personal touch and easier (for me, at least) to follow along. Like two friends having a chat over a drink about something intelligent, complex and dear, instead of a lecture that I can't seem to keep up with, and take little away from. Oh, and could you leave the upper left corner *messages/caveats a few seconds longer? (cocks revolver) it is completely ruining my life, and soon yours, reading those bits in 3 seconds! Cheers!

[@omathitis8498]

You get to choose, then followed by consequences. You get not to choose due to various reasons and circumstances prohibiting you to make your own decisions, so other makes it for you or none at all. Regardless, there will still be consequences. You choose not to choose. Still, it will bear consequences none the less. What I see are these: there are options and there will always be a result based on the options available. Even if an individual makes an active choice or not, something will still happen at the end of it. Even if nothing happens, that too is a result. Causality is inevitable. If this is true, then the universe is governed by a "law" that is constantly occuring and is perpetually operating. It appears as if it was set by design. By whom? I believe that it is by the Cause. As far as anything observable in the universe is concerned, something must originate from something. Cause and effect. Beginning and End. Alpha and Omega. Interpret it as you may like. As we are all finite beings with expiration dates, the worst thing that you can do for yourself is to believe that the universe is the product of an accident.

[@dantedocerto]

Why assume materialism?

[@unsolicitedadvice9198]

Just because otherwise the video would be hundreds of hours long

[@thenightwatchman1598]

@@unsolicitedadvice9198 ok so you are talking out your ass and dont want to engage with the metaphysics of free will. this is why people roll their eyes at you secular atheist types.

[@Alt........138]

Well, even if we define a scale for freedom, the previous arguements still stand that ultimately no will is the person's own. I think we should stop trying to reconcile freedom with our idea of 'moral justice'. Justice could just be that people are locked away by society so society can function function properly. This could include any reason for proper functioning, even false accusations(though mostly that wouldn't be the case). It's got nothing to do with freedom. One might point out what if the person was forced into doing something wrong? Well, if he poses a threat to society still, he'll be punished, if he does not, then he would be spared. My arguement is that not only is there no freedom, but we don't necessarily need the idea of freedom.

[@unsolicitedadvice9198]

I think to a certain extent this is quite a philosophically admirable line of thinking because it does “bite the bullet” of determinism and then says “now what?”

[@Alt........138]

@@unsolicitedadvice9198 I would like to add that this isn't what I think 'should be happening' but rather, what 'is happening'. I think the very arguement that free will exists, or even compatibility is a result of humans trying to reconcile their broken morality with their beliefs that they are moral. Much like how cognitive dissonance and rationalization exist on an individual scale.

[@resir9807]

This is exactly what I've been thinking for a long time. If you use ethical pragmatism as a guide for how to define concepts and which discussions to focus on, it really exposes a lot of these conversations as detatched theoretical musings or even just virtue signalling. Some societies, like the US, are obsessed with a concept of "justice", a sort of metaphysical principle supported by free will, which is ultimately nothing more than a rationalized emotion of vengeance. Other societies, like Norway, prioritize a more humanist (and maybe unintentionally utilitarian) way of dealing with crime: rehabilitation. This is done with the understanding that 1. People can change for the better 2. Rehabilitation is more cost effective 3. Rate of recidivism is lower. One of these clearly leads to a happier society. But as a prerequisite, it requires that you discard this notion of "freedom" and "justice", recognize it as an instinctual emotional reaction that only leads to more harm and learn to let it go. Because knowing that the murderer of your father runs free is bad, but having him murder your mother too is worse.

[@scrupulousscruples]

So presumably if someone committed heinous crimes against another group in order to seize their resources for the benefit of his own, that would be a moral action because what he did was good for his society? This individual is not a harm to his own society, so under the laws of determinism he’s morally sound?

[@Alt........138]

@@scrupulousscruplesI'm not saying that it is, by any means, moral. I'm trying to define justice, and it doesn't seem like morality is essential to the definition. The situation you state of, would be an act of justice from his society's perspective and an act of injustice from the society's perspective that has been harmed. I never said it is morally sound.

[@Peppers_mintus]

Sounds pretty free to me

[@PhilosophywithProfessorParsons]

The way you frame the principle of alternative possibilities at the beginning of the video is *exactly* how many compatibilists understand the nature of freedom of action. As stated, the principle does not imply anything about human agency or source hood libertarianism as you say in this video.

[@unsolicitedadvice9198]

You're right that I could have been more precise in distinguishing the principle of alternative possibilities simpliciter from the "conditional" version. But for pedagogical purposes I didn't want to get carried away with the distinction. I sympathise with your point though - ultimately if we were being strict I would want to define it in a modal logic (I am more of a logician by training anyway, and it is how I wrote it down in my notes for this video). It is just that I didn't end up drawing on the distinction between the two later in the video, so I felt it was appropriate to leave it out for streamlining purposes. I'm always trying to strike a balance between precision/detail and simplicity/understandability.

[@BennyAscent]

I would kill to hear you discuss this with alex o connor, i think that would make it into my top 10 conversations to watch. Im on the side of incompatibalism, and i think the redefinition of free will, that aligns with the idea that we can do what we will, but we cannot will what we will, is useful to describe how societally we should describe agency, given our need for accountability and such, but i dont think its necessarily valid in terms of proving agency in an objective sense. If i am merely the product of my wills, and those wills are merely a product of the biocomputer we call my brain, and the machinations of that biocomputer are determined by the laws of physics and the causal chain stretching back to the big bang, then i am not free, i am simply another system of particles, a puppet of the laws of nature. I think from a purely utilitarian perspective its rational that we should try and argue for the existence of free will. I dont think that the desperate logic liberates us from the fact that determinism (and, in my view, indeterminism) implies a lack of free agency. If i can only do A, if, given the exact same initial condition, i would only ever do A, regardless of how far back you start, i am not free in any meaningful sense of the word.

[@janx2k1]

this channel reminds me of the old Philosophy Tube

[@dellirious13]

Imo Free will is always free will, even if the choice is non-existance, because free will doesn't include the actions of others. Even when coerced I can choose, at my own discretion to die. This is no different than choosing to freely self exit, because self exiting is often directly or indirectly coerced, too. In fact I'd go as far to say that, unless one is alone in a vacuum, one is being at least being indirectly coerced as far as every decision is being made 😅

[@metrab8901]

The problem of free will is only for those who reject metaphysics or have no way to absolutely ground them.

[@donjindra]

What?

[@metrab8901]

@@donjindra If you reject metaphysics or don't have a way to give them coherence by grounding them free will becomes an difficult to prove idea. These issues are only issues for atheist empiricists

[@donjindra]

@@metrab8901 IMO, metaphysics is a vague term. One can't really reject it until one knows how you use the term, and then the rejection is of the definition, not of reality itself. I'd probably fall into your "atheist materialist" category but I believe in free will. So you're wrong about that.

[@metrab8901]

@@donjindra meta-physical that which is not dependent upon material reality like the laws of logic and math. As an atheist materialist you cannot explain how free will is possible or where it comes from. It is more logical from your worldlview to adopt determinism that the world is changing since the big bang things are moving in a certain direction and we behave as we have been evolved to. Nothing we do is 'free' it only appears to be from our vantage point. Morality is evolving along with us and anything that is mind dependent like social constructs. In the future we cannot know what people will think or act like, we can only extrapolate that they will be 'more-evolved' than us.

[@donjindra]

@@metrab8901 "meta-physical that which is not dependent upon material reality like the laws of logic and math." So you define the metaphysical to be the supernatural, or at the very least a dualist "substance." That is not what I think of as metaphysics. Most philosophers define it as ways of thinking about reality. Everyone who thinks about reality -- which is most of us -- has a metaphysics. That's why I thought it strange that you claimed some people deny metaphysics. "As an atheist materialist you cannot explain how free will is possible or where it comes from." I don't need to explain how free will is possible. It simply is -- a brute fact. I experience will and choice and I have no reason to deny that experience. Nor do I need to explain where it comes from, although I think that's pretty obvious -- from processes in our brains. It is not more logical from my worldview to adopt determinism. Quantum physics has rejected determinism. So it's illogical to clutch onto a view of a deterministic universe. I say Sam Harris and other "determinists" have a religious worldview. They have an irrational faith in a determined fate. But I don't share that faith.

[@algobrax]

I watched this one over dinner. Thanks again!

[@NondescriptMammal]

I don't understand why an empiricist would necessarily presume determinism must govern our actions. We only observe such strict determinism in objects that possess no consciousness. Behavior of conscious beings is seldom if ever entirely predictable, or even close to it. As an empiricist I observe this fact, and cannot conclude directly from those observations that conscious beings exhibit behavior that is solely governed by the laws of physics.

[@stateofchrysalis5483]

This video taught me a quick way to get my friends to go to the Zoo with me. Thanks!

[@daniele5349]

I believe that us life would be a lot different in another context, what they teach in school or what we see on internet can influence us, now if a person is really curious maybe can arrive at the point of have more awareness of world, but also a person that has learnt about every situation, will be influenced in choices because in life you need to do also things that you don t like. So in the opinions you can became less and less influence by the context, in actions is a little more difficult because maybe some actions you have to start many years before or you need to survive

[@AshwinPraveen]

Great video! I’ve thought that free will is on a scale for some time too. I don’t think there are concrete answers that are binary to almost any question

[@Oaz_Oliver_proof]

If our beliefs and reasoning processes are predetermined, we cannot independently verify the truth of our beliefs, as our belief in the truth would also be predetermined and not necessarily linked to actual evidence or reasoning. Any argument for the truth of determinism itself would be suspect, as the belief in determinism would also be a predetermined outcome, leading to a form of epistemic circularity. Meaning determinism is circular and self-defeating

[@Joe-bx4wn]

If I have no free will, then I can't give this video a Like. 👍

[@ark-L]

This is a great video! You almost made compatibilism sound coherent ;P To be less snaky about it: I think the point about different gradations of freedom is useful for evaluating how we expect a given person to act, and thus how much of a danger they are to society, say, but I don't think it ultimately allows for the kind of "free" will that would allow us to maintain our colloquial-much less *legal*-use of the term. If someone murdered their lover in a jealous rage and regretted it immensely after, that's certainly much different than someone who murders their lover with glee and vows to do it to another. And as a society, we want for very good reason to treat them very differently. But are either of these individuals really more free than the other? Sure, the former was overtaken by the force of an acute passion in the moment, but is not the other being acted on by a kind of chronic passion at all times? If someone feels the urge to kill but resists it, if that act of resistance is also determined by all prior antecedent states of reality, then how can we really blame or praise someone for whether this "resist" action happened to come up for them as the last link in a chain of causes that started with the beginning of time? Compatibilism sometimes strikes me as looking at a long sequence of dominoes and circling, like, a section near the end where it wasn't obvious how the dominoes would fall and then saying about the last domino: "See! I couldn't tell exactly which domino was gonna hit it, so it must have had a choice! In other words, are we not, at any moment "m", doing what moment "m-1" led us to do? Obviously, this is in large part a restatement of determinism, so a compatibilist is theoretically committed to saying this state of affairs does not undermine their position, but I've still never heard a good reason (and I've suffered, btw, all the best attempts to try) why that's the case beyond playing semantics with the "free" part of free will (looking at you, Danny D). And appeals to the sense of control we *feel* when we take actions really doesn't amount to anything. Optical illusions work because we *feel* like we're seeing something which doesn't turn out to be there. Not to mention, that even the notion that we have a kind of homuncular, unitary self that could be the locus of this free will was more-or-less DESTROYED by the Buddha millennia ago-and modern science has only grown in support of this position. If the "self" is a story we tell our "selves", then how are the parts of that story that involve us actually being in control *not* part of this self-ifying narrative? Now, as a bit of a curveball, I'm a metaphysical idealist, so I think consciousness is the fundamental substrate of existence and the egoic "I" is really a pale inflection of the true "I" which is actually all there is and ever could be... but that still doesn't in any way allow space for free will of the kind that would justify most of the ways we use it! (I think Strawson's so-called "Basic Argument" does the best job of laying out a metaphysically-neutral denial of free will) To circle back, this is especially true of the legal system, at least in the US. If one really takes on the implications of the free will denier's position, then retributive punishment should obviously serve 0 percent of the function of law and yet, It's one of its major pillars. Sorry this is so long, and again, good work! But when it comes to compatibilism, just say *no*... not that you actually have a choice either way ;)

[@unsolicitedadvice9198]

I take your point here and to a certain extent I agree. I think my motivation for compatibilism is not to get everything we want back from freewill, but rather to reconstruct as much freewill as possible within our normal system. My actual views are quite pragmatist, and so I tend to view the function of the concept of responsibility as mostly abstracted from an attempt to spot patternst o predict people's future behaviour, which for me makes the distinction between will-based and external causes a bit easier to cut. However, this comes with its own drawbacks (for instance, it becomes very difficult to talk about long-term psychosis on this view).

[@ark-L]

@@unsolicitedadvice9198 I definitely see your point! And I agree that we need to be able to make the kinds of distinctions you outlined for pragmatic reasons, even under incompatibilism. (And I, of course, also agree with the drawback you acknowledge there). "I think my motivation for compatibilism is not to get everything we want back from freewill, but rather to reconstruct as much freewill as possible within our normal system." This is precisely the problem for me. Our "normal systems" are implicitly based on the kind of free will that determinism makes impossible. In my earlier comment, I touched on how that pertains to the justice system-the punishment end of dessert-but I think it equally applies to the rewards side. The whole notion of our (ostensibly) meritocratic systems hinge on the fact that people are sorted and afforded access to resources by virtue of the "value" they produce for the society. In other words: that they *deserve* to have a claim on more of society's goods and services While there are more thoroughgoing critiques as to the validity of such an arrangement, most criticisms (fairly) point out how these systems fail to live up to their own tenets, rather than questioning the underlying assumptions of dessert that undergird them. I would argue that truly understanding the determinist position should, at minimum, make Rawlsian impositions towards inequality absolutely self-evidently necessary, and at maximum, should point us towards much more radical forms of societal equality. The compatibilist move IMO ends up effectively papering over these issues in favor of manufacturing legitimacy to a system built on false premises. In almost every debate/discussion Dennett has had on the issue, he will at some point lament that philosophers are going around telling people they don't have free will, fearing the impacts it could have on society. This is, of course, a wholly separate question from the truth of the argument itself. And it's ultra-ironic for him to put this forth, given that, as a vocal atheist, he would reject a theist's similar concerns wrt God-and yet he continually makes it a centerpiece to his compatibilist position. Not to mention that I think that there's a very strong case to be made (as I alluded to earlier) that society would *improve* under an acceptance of the incompatibilist position. In any case, it's not fair to use Dennett's arguments as a stand-in for all compatibilists, as it's never quite fair to reduce any philosophical tradition to any single thinker. But I do think in a kind of Kuhnian way, it'll be interesting to see what happens in all kinds of philosophical domains in a post-Dennettian world... I expect big (and positive IMO) changes specifically re consciousness and free will.

[@ReasonWithRainer]

The apparent inherent randomness in quantum mechanics does still leave the possibility for free will, also, I would agree that if we do have free will, it would be very very limited, but it has to only be a free choice between 2 options, like doing or not doing something.

[@mbmurphy777]

Well, randomness or probabilistic mechanisms don’t really rescue free well unfortunately. It just means that instead of you making a decision, it was made randomly or ballistically

[@ReasonWithRainer]

​@@mbmurphy777Randomness does not save free will, but there is a possibility for that randomness to not be random, the possibility of choice.

[@a19894]

But you need to have previous data about those two options to be able to choose .

[@ema-st1ri]

word well said

[@gilgamesh2832]

Being your own 'uncaused cause' is just the ammunition we Christians need to debunk free will. God is sovereign over every thing.

[@simonblaesse4950]

Did you ever think about uploading your stuff to Spotify. I like your Videos and the style you choose. But I also think that this kinda format would be good as a audio book.

[@skipperry63]

Can you please elaborate on what you meant when you said that our wills are physical?

[@JonHarrington9075]

He means that 'will' comes from the brain - which is a physical entity (as opposed, maybe, to something 'spiritual' that exists _outside_ of the brain....which, I guess would be what some people call a 'soul')

[@matthewstroud4294]

Determinism is based upon a view of causation that does not have be so, and is wrong. Aristotelian and Objectivist definitions of causation rely upon Entities that have Identity, which includes the nature of the Entity. The nature of an Entity determines it's possible actions. When it acts, it can only do so within the constraints of it's nature. In an interaction with another Entity, the actions are caused by the natures of the Entities concerned. This is actually how we observe reality to be. A brick hits a window and both the brick and the glass act in accordance with their natures as brick and glass. The results of the collision are caused by the natures of the entities. Determinism has a different account, where a cascade of events occurs, each leading to the next. This can often be labelled "billiard ball causality" as an analogy to balls hitting and moving. But, even billiard balls are only acting in accordance with how billiard balls act (the nature of billiard balls) and couldn't act any other way - that is the Identity of a billiard ball. Via determinism, full knowledge at a snapshot in time would give full predictability and humans are meat computers compelled to act and think arbitrarily. In the entity/identity/nature/action model, human consciousness can include volition, quantum effects and radioactive decay pose no problem, morality exists, true & false can be objectively discerned and knowledge & science all work fine. The next time someone says to you "free will is an illusion" you can answer "You were compelled to say that, right?".

[@Twtgod]

Learn to fight, so you don't look like scrawny intellectual. Great video.

[@ministerofjoy]

Thank you outstanding essay 👏🏼👏🏽💯

[@unsolicitedadvice9198]

Thank you!

[@carloskessels5493]

Why does being coerced, so being limited in your choices mean u don’t have free will? I think Only some will understand what I mean with this…

[@ArthurYannLB]

The “traditional” definition of free will as you frame it is not all that traditional. If you read St Augustine, his notion of free will is more akin to the one put forward by compatiblists. In fact if you take many of his arguments in the Confessions and the Essay on the free choice of the will, he’s very much on that level. “The ability to have done otherwise” and other such definitions I believe are much more modern.

[@mitchellalexander1581]

The sleeper was brought to the mountain, and the sleepers gotta sleep, but his bed is now far away, so he has been made the walker for a time. He didn't choose this, he is compelled

[@mehhhhhhhh2215]

marcus aurelius some how made me a Calvinist

[@unsolicitedadvice9198]

That's really interesting. How did that happen?

[@sigmachadtrillioniare6372]

Thing that Marcus Aurelius made you calvinist is already confusing. But maybe you're not calvinist in the traditional sense and your “god’ is different. Even so I'll be happy to hear how

[@mehhhhhhhh2215]

@@sigmachadtrillioniare6372 not exactly a Puritan but believe in predetermination. Marcus Aurelius briefly speaks on god in the mediations if I remember right(calls it root cause or something) and from there it is some what of a pragmatic argument (at first). Then you eventually kinda mingle the determinism and christianity and get predetermination. I get the compatibillism but it seems like a giant cope atheist or the theistic especially once you consider free will and determinism a false dichotomy in which the subjective or objective view is taken. My understanding of calvinism is not that deep but its kind of the easiest thing to self identify as ig. The epicurean paradox was also relevant not for disproving god but instead free will(evil exist because God found it necessary to some extent). From there it was what god would i want to have faith in and Christ is based. So Marcus lead to determinism led to god led to predetermination led to calvinism i guess

[@HouseOfMinions]

Please share your personal philosophy in a video!

[@Powersnufkin]

How about the buddhist approach. Everything has a cause and effect, being interdependent. Every thought, compulsion and emotion. Causality of the mind.

[@sorenkair]

the issue with describing freeness as a scale is that it only further obscures the illusion. saying one action is more "free" than another is really just saying that its causes are more complex, or that we don't understand it. free will is an illusion. but illusions are real phenomena, we must not necessarily reject them; it's only important that we understand them.

[@aiya5777]

Illusions aren't real🤣🤣🤣 Look, my hand is bigger than the moon, it could easily cover the moon in the sky

[@sorenkair]

@@aiya5777 that's not that i said buddy

[@aiya5777]

@@sorenkair you literally said, illusions are real🤣🤣🤣

[@aiya5777]

@@sorenkair noun: phenomena 1. a fact or situation that is observed to exist or happen Illusions are NOT real phenomena🤣🤣 I don't have an airhead bubble buddy

[@sorenkair]

@@aiya5777 3. PHILOSOPHY the object of a person's perception; what the senses or the mind notice. perhaps it was too difficult for you to understand that I'm not talking about the truth behind the illusion, but the nature of the illusion itself. centrifugal force is not a real force, but within a rotating frame of reference, it is useful and apparent.

[@Chounubis]

*In simply conducting an argumentation, the determinist necessarily contradicts his entire "philosophical outlook" by necessarily presupposing that:* a.) The one with whom he argues possesses the capacities for understanding, for deliberating over the arguments that have been presented, and thus, has been blessed with the freedom to make up his own mind. b.) That the arguer is, himself, free since he must also listen to and understand his peers, and deliberate over the arguments that have been given to him. What would be the purpose of arguing otherwise? If I am but a genetic slave, or a slave of God, or what have you, then my views are already "pre-wired" for me, and that is that. If determinism were true, all argumentation would be but a bizarre and illusory activity and little else, and the only method of peacefully settling our differences would make made useless *("Might Makes Right" and Sophistic uses of language would be the sole alternatives to all peaceful and genuine argumentation - blind determinism, after all, was one of the primary components which made authoritarian systems and philosophies especially volent. See: Marx or Hitler's theories on class or race determinism).* But since the argumentative function of language is so fundamental to man's very existence - since it is that which fundamentally makes a man what he is as a genuine "person" and which separates him from the animals - it cannot be briskly dismissed and whisked away as such *(that would be a deeply absurd and arbitrary thing to do).* Thus, because such genuine qualitative things as "personhood," "freedom," "understanding," etc., must necessarily be presupposed by all arguers everywhere in conducting argumentations, any and all notions of "determinism" become immediately absurd at best, and abhorrent at worst *(see: Yuval Harari, Sam Harris, and other pseudo-intellectual authoritarians for that).* And as for materialism: to assert that everything is strictly "empirical" and "material" is an insanely arbitrary, Gnostic, and "scientistic" assertion that is easily refutable *(are all mathematical truths "material"? What about the things found in Euclidian geometry? Or of logic?).*

[@pathofthegamer8590]

There is no denying that our entire lives can be viewed as a causal chain. For this fact, Determinism is a solid argument though it suffers from an unsavory post hoc nature that no one is truly satisfied with. Life as experienced by the existential being is lived in the "now" and is subject to processes of rational judgement that are undoubtedly taught, assimilated, and refined by individuals with certain characteristics who seemingly use their past experiences, which form their Character, and who seemingly make decisions either in line with that Character or not. In this way Free Will is a solid argument, though it shifts focus from the examined historical individual to the phenomenological. We are both Free and determined. There is no debate. Humanity is so black and white with its binary brain code that everything is an argument, but the totality of facts rejects such exclusive stances.

[@brulsmurf]

The universe isn't Deterministic but probabilistic because of quantum mechanics. Not sure if that helps free will much.

[@cjb_writings]

I find changing the definition of free will pretty unsatisying as i think when most people, who aren't steeped in philosophical ideas, reference free will they're refering to the 'I could have done otherwise'. That being said one of the biggest problems i have (maybe 'uneasy feeling' is closer to what i mean than 'problem') with determinism is that it seems to retroactively use outcomes to demonstrate that there was no ither option. (Well you did x, therefore you were always going to do x or x was always going to happen).

[@cjb_writings]

I am curious on how much our understanding of free will relies on our conception of time. If our fundamental assumptions of time are wrong, then does that logic we use for determinism unravel? The other thought I had is if multiverses exist, and there are infinite multiverses, if randomness (refering to a non casual structure in physics) does exist. Then there would be infinite universes within the multiverse where physics would randomly play out as if it was casual based, even if it's not. So in this instance if randomness can exist then the idea of 'I could have done otherwise' could still exist. Of course I have no way of proving any of that, and it heavily relies of speculative ideas about a multiverse and the seemingly fiction idea that maybe physics might not be casual in nature.

[@Desertphile]

I am not aware of any possible mechanism by which something called "free will" can happen.

[@seven8519]

compatibalism seems like a neat concept, though obviously not without its flaws as all human undertakings are. we are inherently irrational creatures trying to make sense of a world, that simply put, doesn't. personally, I find the notion that determinists think everything can be explained outside of certain subatomic particles to be rife with human error and contradiction. we are already aknowledging that we don't understand certain aspects of the world, but then we want to claim we have this deterministic understanding of our own consciousness? I find that premise pretty silly. if the world is truly deterministic, then there should be no exceptions in the logic. those particles or whatever are not exceptions that act outside of the framework, they are clearly working within it just outside of our current scope of knowledge. the exceptions that exist only come down to our lack of understanding of the world itself, which will always be flawed and incomplete. to think that it won't be is idealistic and hopeful at best, and downright arrogant at worst. having forces outside of our control act upon us doesn't inherently contradict the concept of freewill. is our free will not determined by our ability to reason in spite of these forces? I sympathize with both sides of the free will vs determinism debate, but ultimately it seems like a frivolous argument to place definitions upon inherent truths all humans know to be self evident. this isn't even to say that definitions are a bad thing, in fact I believe very much the opposite. having a clear understanding of a dialectic we can all agree on is fundamental to having meaningful discussions on any topic, and I think the lack of such a thing (or rather a very intentional decinstruction of it over the last few generations) is one of the biggest problems in the west today. I guess, all I am saying is, don't get bogged down by the minutia of things too much and waste away your time arguing over semantics. definitions are important, but they can be a double edged sword if misused. there is just something about this particular branch of philosophy that rubs me the wrong way from both of the commonly accepted frameworks, and the arguments used in both favor for and opposition of them. still, always an interesting exercise of the mind, I suppose.

[@Tucanzz]

ironically, in a postmodern world, people use their freedom to explore every possible thought and position - you can only reject free will because you have the freedom to.

[@matttiberius1900]

The will can chose between A and B, but it has no say whatsoever about the content of A and B.

[@GlomezAtomZ]

Freedom, Justice. Pick one.

[@ElonMuskrat-my8jy]

One is free to act just or unjust.

[@Slamlucifer]

Free will is all good until you see someone selling it

[@davsamp7301]

While free will is Impossible, because it is contradictory, the thoughts and believes in and about it are possible, albight being wrong, because necessarily contradictory.

[@thenightwatchman1598]

methhead take right here.

[@claudiaarjangi4914]

Cool vids . Keep them coming 😁. 🤔Our actions probably dont have free will, coming from physical chemical reactions , but what if our learnt / chosen wants do ? Eg- i want to eat right, act right etc.. As in, us being a self-overseeing, top down consciousness ( or awareness of ourselves through collected, processed & aligned, internal & external senses data ) & being the driver in gross motor actions, based on what our brain has learnt, works. With the ability to SOMTIMES pick the best course of action. Having the ability to have "superpositional" ( just meant descriptively not literally ) thoughts on choices, likes etc. ( 🤔 Sorta like having photos of places you would LIKE to be right now, but you can only ever BE where your now step & next step leads you.) But in the end we can only ever work witbin our bodys learnt "safe" actions/ reactions.. So we may learn/ decide we will airy-fairily WANT to choose something, but unless our brain has learnt HOW to take that action in that particular situation, AND that it will physically serve us best in the moment, we just dont have that option open.. 🤔Our dreams probably help with "practicing" taking wanted actions in those specific situations, when you can't actually "practice" if it will work, in real life.. ( could have explained my meaning better if it wasnt 6 in the morning 😋) 😁☮️🌏

[@victorjun2421]

To expand from your last point, there's a whole spectrum of free will, in the sense that people even if in economically different situations can have options that one another might not have. A CEO of a large company can't simply leave his company and visit a suburban city in fear of being robbed because of his position, the same way a man working a 9/5 can go hiking in the forest and not worry about his job once his shift is over. That brings different levels of free will given external factors, not only a linear array of freedom. But in essence (from a deterministic perspective) that technically wouldn't classify as "true free will" in the sense that we're still limited by our financial/social/moral circumstances even if not physically restricted. We all have some level of autonomy and choices but all bound to an equivalent level of responsibility or a set of rules within society, in that sense the only way to become truly free would be to abandon society and survive on your own, but that's still bound to the condition of being free as long as you fulfill your duties in order to stay alive. I believe we're never truly free, we're all bound to what is and what isn't, around us and within ourselves, consciously or subconsciously.

[@techjunky82]

Before I had ever heard of determinism. I had thought we might not truly have free will. My thinking wasn't based on physics though. My thinking starts with how we make any decision or choice. It seems that we use our collective knowledge to come to any decision. Ok so far not an issue. Until you consider that every decision you have made used the preceding knowledge you had before that moment and before that moment. Now go all the way back to when you were born. Did you decide to be born. No, in fact every experience you had as a baby was forced upon you by your parents. So, if your starting knowledge was out of your control and every decision is based on that knowledge onward. I surmise that every decision you make is based on circumstances that you never had control of in the first place. There for it would all be predetermined for everyone. and your path was set since the beginning of time. Then I learned about determinism and was like well shit. That makes sense too.

[@Slamlucifer]

Yeah our way to decide and choose come from our instincts. When we were hunter gatherers we used observations to check on things. For example: if we saw someone eating and due to red berriers we marked it as poisonous and avoided it at all cost. And one of the things that play a major role in our choosing is influences around our head which is often saved by environment. The concept of free will is contradicting and so we need to have both opposing believe in our mind

[@sigmachadtrillioniare6372]

But the “will” exists in every person. We dont make decisions solely on knowledge, or external factors, or on ourselves. The “you” who is experiencing this reality, acts in accordance and caused due to many things. If we were all just purely deterministic, all of us would be engaging in drugs and just chasing dopamine. Not all do, most don't. There's more to our actions than either of things, it's not just determinism, it's not just free will. Taking either of stances is simply wrong

[@Slamlucifer]

Well that explaination blew my mind. Very well. Loved it. Thank you

[@Slamlucifer]

Sigmachadtrillaniore❤

[@farhanrafid8584]

free will exists in present, not in past or future

[@figgtree204]

Given the state of the universe, if everything that followed is the only possible thing which could of happened and its literally impossible for anything else to be the case... then how would our brains even be able to conceptualize the possibility of anything else happening or being the case.

[@ATalesTruth-]

Because the laws of physics dictate anything that could happen can will or has happened already in the past now or in the future It’s a case even if everything is determined you are 1 out of infinity Meaning you are unique in what you do from the jump same as everything and everyone in existence It should be like this What you did is solid concrete What you do now is pliable What ever will happen next is undefined And here is the thing unless everything is fixed in enegery and information and nothing new comes about or more then what there was in the beginning It’s impossible to keep track of everything and say what will happen Thus even our projections of the future are left to uncertainty even if fully determined It’s a simple line of logic that we are as free was we wish to be yet still slaves to our wants and needs Making decisions based on our limited understanding of the universe And to think we can read the universe and assume we see everything from begin to end Is just as foolish as the person who sails blind in an ocean thinking they can go anywhere without having in line beforehand a destination And yet the reason for that destination may be just as fruitless as them not going at all The point is we can only take responsibility for what we end up doing And don’t make excuses that we had no options Or That we are filled with unlimited options People need to realize if Time as we know it doesn’t work linearly who is to say cause and effect isn’t a straight line either in which Our own logic or understanding of cause and effect is limited beyond what we do know Simply put Stop wondering what stars are in the night sky when we have no knowledge or tools to properly measure or observe them And that’s being generous to our understanding of stars

[@figgtree204]

@@ATalesTruth- yeah we agree, with the implication in my first comment being that since we obviously 𝘢𝘳𝘦 able to conceptualize something else happening then we are indeed free to will something other than what the universe dictates under a presumed 1-to-1 cause/effect structure.

[@Redreynard]

I believe in free will. And I believe in compatibilism. Let me give you my definition of free will:- Free will means that you are free to do what you want (from the options in your brain, and subject to the laws of physics). Free to choose what you want (for example choose an apple, rather than an orange - which I represent as

[@gaiusbaltar7122]

You don't have to believe in free will just like you don't have to believe that you exist. It is a fact.

[@Redreynard]

@@gaiusbaltar7122 So you agree with me. Great!

[@marcino8966]

damn in the middle of the video I wanted to make my point but Mr. peter van inwagen was faster quite a few years

[@daanschone1548]

The probability version can also be seen as free in another way. Because we can do random things, we can learn new things. We can be creative that way. Without the randomness there is no true creativity, just something building on a past cause.

[@sorenkair]

randomness is antithetical to creativity. what you're probably referring to is the inability to pinpoint our inspirations.

[@daanschone1548]

@@sorenkair if the creativity is based on external inspiration it is a reassembling of some existing things. If it is a totally new idea than where does it come from? If stemming from Newtonian mechanics it is not truly creative.

[@sorenkair]

@@daanschone1548 every snowflake can be said to be new, as no two are identical. but not necessarily different in an interesting way, which is what creativity seeks to do. our brains are not quantum computers, and that's the only source of true randomness in our universe. our ideas only seem random because of the incredible complexity of our brains, like the tiny atmospheric variations that create unique snowflake.

[@daanschone1548]

@@sorenkair our brains are not quantum computers. But QM seems to have function in the brain. kzbin.info/www/bejne/iGeqYndoirZmncksi=0vfhQoEklYdVc7Vh And I think if QM random/probability is real than it might just be the reason every snowflake is unique.

[@daanschone1548]

@@sorenkair the reason every snowflake is unique might be just QM. And if you interpret QM as non deterministic than our brains are neither.

[@TrixyTrixter]

I do not see how free will and determinism would be able to really be distinguished from each other. If we are predetermined then we could still be under the illusion that free will exists because we were predetermined to be soo. While if free will exists I cannot think of a single experiment that could prove it.

[@gaiusbaltar7122]

If free will does not exist, there must be an intelligence somewhere ruling everything.

[@aquashadow-if8gl]

@@gaiusbaltar7122 Yes, thank you. If there is no freewill then there is some magical mysterious intelligence that is deciding everything, since "You" aren't the one doing it. Which is equally if not more absurd than freewill being true. Your actions must be "yours" since You are going to be the one feeling the very real and painful results of your actions. You are the one understanding the situation, then you are the one who must live through the outcome. People say 'oh it's just your subconscious brain making the decisions before you are conscious of them'. Then how can a clump of wet atoms understand something before "You" understand that thing? The implications are worse then and harder to prove than there being freewill.

[@margotishrn]

The Wyrd....

[@danisharrouf4660]

Its kind of weird how some ideas that we thought were absurd at some point in our lives ,showed to have a deep meaning, religions such as islam state that our destinies are predetermined by god before we even existed.

[@ElonMuskrat-my8jy]

That would make Allah an unjust tyrant for rewarding and punishing people not based on their actions but on what he determined them to do. It turns humans into robots.

[@sigmachadtrillioniare6372]

@@ElonMuskrat-my8jy not only that, their religion punishes and rewards people for that too

[@mullemax3138]

for the longest time I didn't want to believe that we didn't have free will, but I had an epitome where realised and could no longer denied, and now I don't know how to come to term with it

[@hukiamp3]

This topic really messes with my head. If every discussion is predetermined, why even bother doing anything. Of course I don't know what my future is. But if the future is predetermined none of my decisions really matter because they were made long before I was born. It's just like watching a movie. Nothing has or will matter. Funny stuff

[@GreyException]

Sometimes I think we defer to the past too often which contributes to limited, almost dichotomous and absolutist perspectives. Do we have full control over our circumstances? Clearly not. Do we have zero control over any aspect of our lives? Clearly not. It seems obvious that the answer was never on either extreme end. If I was forced to pick between two old schools of thought, I would be in the free will camp even if I think our "will" is heavily limited and confined to a set of choices. Why? Because hard determinism comes across as overly cynical and nihilistic. The world operates under the impression that individuals have some level of free will. If hard determinism were true, nothing should warrant reflection or questioning as all is set in stone already. There is no need to analyze behaviors or influence outcomes in a hard determinist hypothetical world; it is entirely meaningless.

[@charlesmanning3454]

"will" is a useless term. It's ill-defined or circularly defined and It doesn't explain anything including human behavior. We can get along fine without it. When people do something the question shouldn't be "did they do so freely", it should be "what are we going to do about it." In the case of the sleeper who shoots someone we would explain their actions as due to some medical condition so we treat the medical condition. In the case of the stabber, we might ascribe his actions to violent and personality we don't know how to change so we lock him up to protect ourselves. In either case we can ignore "will" and still respond appropriately.

[@Therhizomemind]

Can you do one on Marcel Proust please!!!!

[@diligentsun1154]

Shout out to the stripey carnivorous fiend!

[@jamespierce5355]

It sounds like we need to do away with the proposition that all that exists is physical material (matter and energy). P1. Mere effects of physics can be neither true or false. (Is a tornado more true than an earthquake?). P2. If determinism is true, all human evaluations, propositions, understanding, etc. are mere effects of physics. C. If determinism is true, all human evaluations, propositions, understanding, etc. can be neither true or false (a problematic conclusion that is reached when determinism is assumed). _________________________________ P1. My thoughts and actions are all predetermined, effects of physics from the big bang (once again assuming determinism to be true). P2. Your thoughts and actions are all predetermined, effects of physics from the big bang. C1. Your nor my statement could be either 'more true' or 'more false' than the other. C2. If determinism is true, there is no such thing as true or false. (Is that true?)

[@nomebom7140]

I think you have completely misunderstood concepts of cause and effect in physics, although in filosofy you can just argument something without concrete evidence that's not the way physics is, you can absolutely define something as true or not like wether or not an atom has decayed or that the speed of light in a vacuum is constant. If you wanna talk about the implications of a universe were everything is determined thats cool and very productive, but fuckin saying that nothing can be determined true or not in determinism is just an aneurysm inducing stupid, stupid statement

[@jamespierce5355]

@@nomebom7140 is scientific verification the only way to truth?

[@nomebom7140]

@@jamespierce5355 Yes, in the objective lab it absolutely does that's the nature of the scientific method and when we base the discussion of determinism on a scientific observation it matters.

[@mbmurphy777]

@@nomebom7140 I think what he means is that any value statement or ethical precept can no longer be considered true or false, or even have any meaning at all, because values and ethical precepts presupposes that things could have been a different way, which is impossible in a deterministic universe

[@ElonMuskrat-my8jy]

​@@mbmurphy777Not just ethics but epistemology is impossible under determinism.

[@User1125-ht2ki]

Hello there,I'm new to Philosophy and struggling find which book to choose.Stoicism caught my mind then,but is it it good though as a starter?Or other suggestions to read or read next?Thank you!

[@ElonMuskrat-my8jy]

Plato and Epictetus are great places to start.

[@User1125-ht2ki]

@@ElonMuskrat-my8jy okay thanks

[@templecreations2351]

Compatibilism seemed the most convincing to me personally.

[@zaja2418]

Really? I always thought it was a kind of copium stance. A hard determinist would see that Sleeper not wanting to climb to the top of the mountain has nothing to do with him being 'free' or not. Why was Sleeper sleeping when he got abducted? Because internal causes in his brain chemistry compels him to rest rather than seek adventure, unlike Walker, whose brain chemistry rather compels to seek thrills and fun. Thus Sleeper was not awake, nor could he ever have been awake --- even if we were to reverse time and start the whole scenario a thousand times -- to resist being taken to the top of the mount.

[@templecreations2351]

@@zaja2418 well to me, hard determinism is the copium stance, given its the simple answer that most people actually want. hard determinism absolves you of a sense of ultimate responsibility for your actions, it delegates responsibility away from you, it also seemingly explains other people’s bad and painful choices. it “essentialises” everything that is bad in the world, making it feel like everything was and is inevitable, which is comforting (cope). this handing over of control is what many hard determinists want rather than an inconvenient and messy truth, which is that its complicated, and that we have both aspects to contend with.

[@comq01]

@@templecreations2351 you can see it that way but determined or not we are still making decisions, our decisions, so for me accepting determinism doesnt take anything away from our lifes, it can actually help us be better, more loving and accepting persons