Daniel Dennett - What is Free Will?

Free will is a problem. If it seems obvious that you are perfectly free to choose and decide, then it seems perfectly clear that you do not understand the problem. Free will is a huge problem, because our sense of free will and the physical structure of the world contradict each other. A kind of solution is to change the definition of free will. Is this fair?

Daniel Clement Dennett III is a philosopher, writer, and cognitive scientist and is currently the Co-director of the Center for Cognitive Studies and Professor at Tufts University.

Closer To Truth, hosted by Robert Lawrence Kuhn and directed by Peter Getzels, presents the world’s greatest thinkers exploring humanity’s deepest questions. Discover fundamental issues of existence. Engage new and diverse ways of thinking. Appreciate intense debates. Share your own opinions. Seek your own answers.

[rikconant]

R.I.P. Mr. Dennett. One of the greatest thinkers of our time.

[MicahPotts]

This guy is infinitely cooler just cause he's talking from the back of his bench and arm hunched over like a cool teacher.

[ModestNeophyte]

I don't consider myself an intellectual and I've found some barriers to getting into philosophy, but Daniel Dennett has been a top mind that I've been a fan of ever since that TED talk years ago. He's such a great speaker, easy to follow, and sharp as hell.

[Giovanna-tl]

Free will cannot emerge from mechanical physical processes. To think otherwise would be contradictory. Free will pertains to consciousness, which is the 'hard problem' of materialistic science.

[HyzersGR]

The ever-cogent, ever-coherent, Daniel Dennett, ladies and gentleman.

[zenzen]

Another totally excellent video. Thank you for sharing this with us :)

[ianwaltham]

Determinists avoid talking about the most ridiculous aspect of their belief. Which is that every thought, feeling, and decision of every human being that ever lived or will live was pre-determined before they were even born.

So Determinists, don't be feeling proud of you or your families achievements because you didn't achieve anything. The Universe did it all!

And if you find this comment mildly annoying don't blame me. I had no choice. I had to write this comment. It was pre-determined millions of years ago, remember!

[johnaugsburger]

Thanks. I've been hung up on this free will subject recently.

[kentam]

Free will must be looked at within the framework of human experience which is not infinite but open ended. Thus free will and determinism are mutually inclusive interacting with each other.

[stevenholt]

What does wanting to take responsibility mean in a deterministic world? I can't fathom Dennett, having read one of his books on the subject (Elbow Room); he seems to want it both ways.
Peter Strawson wrote a superb essay on free will in the '60s. The world is completely determined, he posited, but every human being on the planet acts as if free will exists (even if one believes it to be an illusion), so what does it matter one way or the other?

[OnlyTheSon]

He didnt really answer it did he? because its impossible to answer.
He has no clue what Free will is at the end of the day!

[kalmanjulianne]

Between 4:30 - 5:20 I am confident that Mr Dennett is describing a psychopath/machine not a Human. I am pro personal responsibility even when a benefit is not derived for myself.
Disclaimer: In my life I have been both a believer in God and also held a position that God does not exist, I am not a cognitive scientist whose research centers on the philosophy. I would value feedback pertaining to my humble opinion.

[markberman]

Without free will all probability breaks down and there is no point.

[petermartin]

Isn't free will just a decision made as a conscious decision, and therefore available to be considered before the act and evaluated after the act, in the service of learning to do the same or different next time.

[bennyskim]

Reality is only partially deterministic, and some parts more than others. Because measuring any aspect of reality is a relative relationship between object:observer, and because reality is multidimensional, it means it is capable of being seen from different perspectives, some of which are contradictory with each other, thus it cannot be completely deterministic - things go one way or the other (& many others, and neither).

Free Will disappears like a rainbow when you see it in action in AI chat agents capable of the same knowledge-based decision-making training humans go through. If AI can recognize a cat, then AI can recognize itself recognizing a cat, and tell a story about itself over the years as it learns other stuff, in the same way that humans finally understand that we are a recognizer around the age of 2. It takes 2+ years of training just for baseline self recognition - we don't come with that out of the box!

I really like Sam Harris' Sylvester Stallone example - goes something like... someone could ask you the actor in a boxing movie from the 70s/80s, and in that moment you cannot think of Sylvester Stallone (Rocky), it's who you want to think of, you know who he is, it's one of your favorite movies that you know very well, but in that moment, it's on the tip of your tongue but you just can't think of Stallone. Then 2 hours later you're like "Sylvester Stallone! That's who I was thinking of". It proves that at times at least, we don't have even full access to our own knowledge base, let alone the complete free will to act decidedly on it. We are at least limited by our current brain and mind state, chemistry, energy levels, environment, and so-on.

On the other hand, if you take an approach like Donald Hoffman, where you start with a theory of consciousness, and explain the rest of reality from there - then Free Will moves into a more universal role. If the universe isn't really made of atoms and molecules, and it really is "consciousness first" that learns to construct space and time, and all the characters in it, then reality only exists when and where consciousness decides (we don't know how) - it just is, and when we try to describe it within the system its running, we can't find it. We can find correlations in the neurons of brains, and curiously we find the decision being made before there is awareness of it. For a theory like Hoffman's, I think you need Free Will as an explanatory force - you might be able to get a Big Bang out of a theory of consciousness, but we need consciousness from a theory of consciousness.

I for the most part very much agree with Dennett's take, he's not wrong. We're always going to need Dan Dennett and Michael Shermer types to show us where the boundaries are!

[earthjustice]

The robot babysitter example is great. The problem is responsibility. A robot is not responsible. Responsibility is part of a moral or normative system. We already find ourselves in a normative system, where we, as competent adults, have moral responsibility and deserve blame if we break moral rules. The robots are never part of this system, they don't feel any obligations.

[michaelhebert]

So greed is desiring the benefits of freedom without being help responsibe.

[jareknowak]

Responsibility has evolutional/social roots and has nothing in common with "free will".

[roudys]

It's painful watching Dennett come around to determinism...step by step Dan. You're almost there...

[dorfmanjones]

I didn't even know Will was incarcerated.