Eran Zaidel - Can Brains Have Free Will?

Free will seems the simplest of notions. Why then is free will so vexing to philosophers? Here’s why: no one knows how free will works! Science, seemingly, permits no ‘gaps’—’joints’ in the structure of the world—in which free will can operate. The brain seems like an all-physical system working according to physical laws. How then a will that’s fully free?

Eran Zaidel is Professor Emeritus of Behavioral Neuroscience and of Cognition in the Department of Psychology at UCLA, and a member of UCLA’s Brain Research Institute.

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.

[DCDevTanelorn]

This was a super productive discussion. Maybe because they both are neuroscientists. Some interviews are just about asking questions, but in this case, it’s a deep discussion that goes both ways. Great to see.

[rob.parsnips]

If zero is no understanding, and a million is total understanding, I think we’re at like a two on free will

[vanikaghajanyan]

4:24 "Nature does not change its laws once chosen." (Socrates); 
"A free man is a slave to the law." (Cicero);
"The needs of the flesh are modest, that is, limited. The flesh clearly knows what it wants, and achieves it without frills. What is so terrible about the needs of the flesh? 
It wants to live, it wants to properly perform her functions, it resists pain. When the desires of the flesh are fulfilled, it does not invent new ones. Gluttony, drunkenness, debauchery are sins of the spirit*(imagination) in front of the flesh, at its expense and in spite of its protests, and not the other way around, although it is considered just the opposite. It is the flesh that finally pays all the bills - not only for its own, but also for all the follies of our spirit.
The spirit is not limited by anything. He can imagine anything, and any of his ideas tends to be embodied. … Jokes aside. What kind of thoughts do not wander in the human head, and it is a great happiness that they cannot become reality without overcoming the resistance of matter.
… I'm not saying that only bad thoughts are swarming in my head. But God forbid that noble, altruistic plans should also be carried out by themselves. So that any plan of the world order, born in one head, confident that this one plan is the one that the world needs, is implemented automatically and scrupulously. 
And the good Lord God really did not allow this, giving us time, matter and space in which, after all, everything should unfold... In the theater, directors with "ideas" scare me, but there are also those who are ready to direct the whole world.
… The sense of smell makes us run away from the stench. The body of even the greatest criminal does not like to be near carrion, and the "purest" spirit quietly gets along with the greatest swinishness. 
The Spirit has always loved public executions, he loves to gather around street incidents and read about sexually motivated murders. … At a time when wars were fought hand-to-hand, only physical exhaustion, fatigue of the hands stopped the massacre. The spirit would continue to cut.
Let the spirit reflect on this."
(Mrozek, Short Letters, "Flesh and Spirit", fragment).
P.S. It seems that true free will is a culture of self-restraint.

*) - consciousness.

[christopherchilton-smith]

3:57 I don't understand how the brain worms wiggle their way in at this point. It's like he's taken the content out of the word determined resulting in pure word salad.

Obviously if the brain is determined by the states that precede it, if all choices made are the result of a continuous arch of gene sensitivity being modulated by environment in a self tuning feedback loop, then this *includes* moments where the prefrontal cortex steps in to inhibit.

The PFC also doesn't have infinite willpower to do it's job, it's modulated by the states that precede it in the causal chain.

Wtf man.

[elementelement]

We don't have a free will. We have a choice but a label "free will" is misleadind.

[wolfbenson]

The first 8 minutes was, to me, just a contradiction: All is material, but, you can modulate. So how would you modulate it? If it's all material, then your modulating would also be material and that is not free. After the 8 minutes they began to discuss split brain and what the brain is, "conscious" of. I found that far more intriguiging. If indeed the brain "doesn't know, " or does, but is not "conscious" of this knowledge, how does the "free" modulating work? Modulating is choosing. But if it's not conscious, how can you choose? My question doesn't prove or disprove anything. Just confused on how the unconscious brain can be convinced to actively modulate.. Help

[christopherchilton-smith]

2:14 The fact that it doesn't make sense to talk about a person as a unified whole (from a certain perspective) misses the point when talking about free will. For one, how do you just start with the assertion that these 2 intentions represent 2 free wills? It begs the question. It also doesn't satisfy the only meaningful question about supposedly freely made choices, how did either hemisphere become the kind of hemisphere that would have that intention and make that choice?

[ashwinwriter]

This was indeed a very interesting, informative, and fruitful discussion. Thank you!

[MrJPI]

If I eat peanuts, I eat them from my free will. I I have to go to the WC, I go there from my free will. I am not so stupid as to do something that I don't want to do, like not eating delicious peanuts or peeing in my pants.

[willieluncheonette]

" This is not a personal problem, it is a philosophical question. Our lives are both predestined and they are not. Both yes and no. And both answers are true for all questions about life. In a way, everything is predetermined. Whatever is physical in you, material, whatever is mental, is predetermined. But something in you constantly remains undetermined, unpredictable. That something is your consciousness.

If you are identified with your body and your material existence, in the same proportion you are determined by cause and effect. Then you are a machine. But if you are not identified with your material existence, with either body or mind – if you can feel yourself as something separate, different, above and transcendent to body-mind – then that transcending consciousness is not predetermined. It is spontaneous, free.

Consciousness means freedom; matter means slavery. So it depends on how you define yourself. If you say, ”I am only the body, ” then everything about you is completely determined. A person who says that man is only the body cannot say that man is not predetermined. Ordinarily, persons who do not believe in such a thing as consciousness also do not believe in predetermination.

Persons who are religious and believe in consciousness ordinarily believe in predetermination. So what I am saying may look very contradictory. But still, it is the case. A person who has known consciousness has known freedom. So only a spiritual person can say there is no determination at all. That realization comes only when you are completely unidentified with the body. If you feel that you are just a material existence, then no freedom is possible.

With matter, no freedom is possible. Matter means that which cannot be free. It must flow in the chain of cause and effect. Once someone has achieved consciousness, enlightenment, he is completely out of the realm of cause and effect. He becomes absolutely unpredictable. You cannot say anything about him. He begins to live each moment; his existence becomes atomic.

Your existence is a river-like chain in which every step is determined by the past. Your future is not really future; it is just a by-product of the past. It is only the past determining, shaping, formulating and conditioning your future. That is why your future is predictable.

Skinner says that man is as predictable as anything else. The only difficulty is that we have not yet devised the means to know his total past. The moment we can know his past, we can predict everything about him. Based upon the people he has worked with, Skinner is right, because they are all ultimately predictable. He has experimented with hundreds of people and he has found that they are all mechanical beings, that nothing exists within them that can be called freedom.

But his study is limited. No Buddha has come to his laboratory to be experimented upon. If even one person is free, if even one person is not mechanical, not predictable, Skinner’s whole theory falls. If one person in the whole history of mankind is free and unpredictable, then man is potentially free and unpredictable. The whole possibility of freedom depends on whether you emphasize your body or your consciousness.

If you are just an outward flow of life, then everything is determined. Or are you something inner also? Do not give any preformulated answer. Do not say, ”I am the soul.” If you feel
there is nothing inside you, then be honest about it. This honesty will be the first step toward the inner freedom of consciousness. If you go deeply inside, you will feel that everything is just part of the outside. Your body has come from without, your thoughts have come from without, even your self has been given to you by others.

That is why you are so fearful of the opinion of others – because they are completely in control of your self. They can change their opinion of you at any moment. Your self, your body, your thoughts are given to you by others, so what is inside? You are layers and layers of outside accumulation. If you are identified with this personality of yours that comes from others, then everything is determined.

Become aware of everything that comes from the outside and become non-identified with it. Then a moment will come when the outside falls completely. You will be in a vacuum. This vacuum is the passage between the outside and the inside, the door. We are so afraid of the vacuum, so afraid of being empty that we cling to the outside accumulation. One has to be courageous enough to disidentify with the accumulation and to remain in the vacuum. If you are not courageous enough, you will go out and cling to something, and be filled with it.

But this moment of being in the vacuum is meditation. If you are courageous enough, if you can remain in this moment, soon your whole being will automatically turn inward. When there is nothing to be attached to from the outside, your being turns inward.

Then you know for the first time that you are something that transcends everything you have been thinking yourself to be. Now you are something different from becoming; you are being. This being is free; nothing can determine it. It is absolute freedom. No chain of cause and effect is possible.

Osho - Your actions are related to past actions. A created a situation for B to become possible; B creates a situation in which C flowers. Your acts are connected to past acts and this goes back to the beginningless beginning and on to the endless end. Not only do your own acts determine you, but your father’s and mother’s acts also have a continuity with yours. Your society, your history, all that has happened before, is somehow related to your present act. The whole history has come to flower in you.

Everything that has ever happened is connected with your act, so your act is obviously determined. It is such a minute part of the whole picture. History is such a vital living force and your individual act is such a small part of it. Marx said, ”It is not consciousness that determines the conditions of society. It is society and its conditions that determines consciousness. It is not that great men create great societies.

It is great societies that create great men.” And he is right in a way, because you are not the originator of your actions. The whole history has determined them. You are just carrying them out. The whole evolutionary process has gone into the making of your biological cells. These cells in you can then become part of another person. You may think that you are the father, but you have just been a stage on which the whole biological evolution has acted and has forced you to act. The act of procreation is so forceful because it is beyond you; it is the whole evolutionary process working through you.

This is one way in which acts happen in relation to other past acts. But when a person becomes enlightened, a new phenomenon begins to happen. Acts are no longer connected with past acts. Any act, now, is connected only with his consciousness. It comes from his consciousness not from the past. That is why an enlightened person cannot be predicted.

Skinner says that we can determine what you will do if your past acts are known. He says that the old proverb, ”You can lead a horse to water but you can’t make him drink, ” is wrong. You can force him to. You can create an atmosphere so that the horse will have to drink. The horse can be forced, and you also can be forced, because your actions are created by situations, by circumstances. But even though you can bring a buddha to the river, you cannot force him to drink. The more you force him, the more impossible it will be.

No heat will make him do it. Even if a thousand suns shine on him it will not help. A Buddha has a different origin of action. It is not concerned with other acts; it is connected with consciousness. That is why I emphasize that you act consciously. Then, every moment you act, it is not a question of a continuation of other acts. You are free. Now you begin to act, and no one can say how you will act.

Habits are mechanical; they repeat themselves. The more you repeat something, the more efficient you become. Efficiency means that now consciousness is no longer needed. If a person is an efficient typist it means that no effort is needed; typing can be done unconsciously. Even if he is thinking about something else the typing continues. The body is typing; the man is not needed. Efficiency means that the thing is so certain that no effort is possible.

With freedom, effort is always possible. A machine cannot make errors. To err, one has to be conscious. So your acts have a chain relationship with your previous acts. They are determined. Your childhood determines your youth; your youth determines your old age. Your birth determines your death; everything is determined. Buddha used to say, ”Provide the cause, and the effect will be there.” This is the world of cause and effect in which everything is determined.

If you act with total consciousness, an altogether different situation exists. Then everything is moment to moment. Consciousness is a flow; it is not static. It is life itself, so it changes. It is alive. It goes on expanding; it goes on becoming new, fresh, young. Then, your acts will be spontaneous."

[jamesruscheinski]

is there a way to trace backward measurement of quantum wave function in physical brain?

[kallianpublico]

Anything that can undergo change by its own intention has free will.
The onus is on those who "believe" that intention is merely a pretext. A pretext to an unchanging law.
It cannot be that the law that makes us pull our hand out of a fire also controls those who force themselves to keep their hand in the fire. A law that changes is inconsistent to determinism.
What unchanging law or set of laws determines the consciousness of living beings with self-consciousness and without?

[farhadfaisal]

So, the interesting conclusion seems to be that ''freedom to will'' is apparently free in various degrees b u t within the causal constraint of biology of the brain processes and states.

[jayachandranthampi]

Willing Freedom or Freeing the Willing - it's simply Detaching by paying a Fee. To detach is by Intentionally attaching or allowing the flow of events - Authorship than freedom is a Flexibility, exercised. Similarly, is the brain an ordering system or a feedback driven system??? Seems to be feedback based. Again dependent on Heart & other system given feedback.

[murphydupler]

Milton Erickson w indirect hypnosis created illogical binds of choice. "you may or may not notice" type statements. Once confused, patients would in a sense freeze from inability to decide. THEN Erickson could present an issue to consider w a story. Point is confusion needed to lead/restrict issue focus. Obviously the sales business loved this so who really has free will?

[djtomoy]

After watching this I have chosen to believe I have no free will, this also absolves me of responsibility for all the awful things I choose to do going forward 😈

[jamesruscheinski]

maybe causation and sense of free will from measurement / collapse of quantum wave function?

[realitycheck]

Free will is non-dualism. Since we are dual, then there is no free will. Since we have many choices (dualism) we have no free will. The only free will choice we have, If only temporary, is between non-dualism and dualism. Between love and fear. Any choice based on fear is not free. Free will is freedom. Freedom from the dualism of constant choosing.

[aleembabur]

Agree with realistic outcome but don't agree that it is useless.

[benbarkerdreaming]

It's clear he doesn't think from an animal's perspective... That don't have the conscious levels of humans .. it's so simplistic