Freewill Vs Determinism. Why I'm a 'hard determinist'.

A brief video explaining why I don't think free will exists. I shot this because I often get into discussions with my friends about this, and often fail to articulate my thinking clearly. Hopefully, I've explained it better here. 🕵 Check out the research on subconscious decision making here 🕵

[alittleofeverything]

The cool thing about it is even a hard determinist will wake up tomorrow and be faced with the perception of choice. For all intents and purposes life just goes on with that perception of free will. It serves us well enough in our day-to-day lives that the thought experiment of determinism doesn't really have much of an impact in our lives. Some people think determinism is depressing to think about but in a way it's freeing and fascinating.

[coreywiley]

I'm pondering if we are either in a hard deterministic universe or if we have like a tiny bit of leeway to make momemnt to moment choices and decisions, but are still entirely completely influenced and moved and propulsed by our environment and circumstances and our hormones/human nature/ sub-conscious etc..
So I think of it like a river...1. either we're like an eddy in a raging river, actually an energetic manifestation and part of that river, molecules or atoms witin the river as it gushes along it's course (that would be the hard determinist ) or 2. we are like protist flailing it's flaggella in a swirling eddy within a huge gushing river. The second model would indicate that w are still carried along the course of river but we are an organism within the river and we can maneuver a little bit in the stream to grab a bit of food or reproduce if another protist is near, but ultimately it is just survival and reacting to an environment as it carries us toward a final destination. Even if it is the second mode I still don't think we have really much choice in life and that the outcome of peoples' circumstance is mostly outside of their control.

[abogadocarlosmorthera]

Many thanks and greetings from Cancun México!

[timtebowfan]

I believe in Determinism. I am shy, withdrawn and stutter and I applied to 5 colleges. I wanted to interview at the colleges as I thought it would help. All schools were equally selective but I was unable to visit one school due to a family emergency. I was only accepted to one college and that was the one I did not visit.

[blackmetalmagick]

It's not just external factors that determine our lives. It's our desire. Our desire determines what we do, from when we wake, to when we close our eyes again. And we have no control over desire.

[ZemikianUchiha]

A response for each of your major premises:
1. The sand question : "The free will is removed by external factors..."
a. This doesn't sound like it genuinely considers the premise of Libertarianism. Your choice must be determinant on external factors to be sure, but there comes a clear distinction between the finity of possible choices to select from, and the ability to select at all. Nothing in this has demonstrated either a paradox for Libertarianism, or a necessity for Hard Determinism. The free will in this example was not "removed by external factors", but modified by external factors, some of which may have also been results of other choices made by free actors.

2. Essentially, "Some environmental factors are beyond individual control, therefore you have no capability to change them."
a. This is circular reasoning. "Because somethings cannot be changed by you, you cannot change them." To be clear, environmental causation certainly exists - that is, some things are determined completely independently of agency or free will -- a tree falls not because someone willed it to happen, but because of the environmental factors that caused the tree to fall. That isn't the same as saying, "all outcomes are outcomes of strict environmental factors"

3. "Did you choose to be conceived/born/etc.?"
a. This is a straw man to be sure. Libertarianism is not the belief that the individual is responsible for all things that happen to or about them. I did not choose to be born, but to the Libertarian, clearly my parents chose to engage in activities which happened to conceive me. Did I or they choose my genetics? No. Again, not all things are strictly caused by agency, this seems like the straw man you're attempting to deconstruct, which I can't think of a rational supporter for.

4. "When did you make your first choice? I don't think anybody can answer that. I think there's a simple reason for that: because you were never in charge of anything..."
a. Another straw man here, followed by an assumption of the conclusion. "The proof that you were never in charge of anything is: you cannot remember the first thing you were in charge of." I know this isn't intended to be a strictly logical argument, but the rationale fails demonstrably. The number of times you say the answer is hard determinism does not make for a stronger argument - I've yet to hear a claim that refutes or supports the underlying assumptions you're making.

5. Essentially, "The decisions you make are the only decisions that could have been made by you."
a. Clearly your strongest point yet, and the one it seems like you've been building up to. The issue with this statement is that it relies on its own premise and is therefore circular reasoning. "This happened, therefore this must have happened." Unverifiable hypotheses like many-worlds aside, this only provides one explanation to what could have happened and relies on the lack of ability to test such a claim to be true. I can make an antithetical claim quite easily: "This happened, but many things could have happened depending upon your will at the time." However, this doesn't prove the statement's authenticity, only its viability as a potential explanation. Since the only way we can experience time is as a temporal phenomenon, assumptions about the unobservable past are merely philosophical. I'm also tempted to say this potentially borders on the stolen concept fallacy wherein the explanation that no events can be chosen relies on the assumption that choice exists in the first place. Otherwise, if the only point is to say that past events must have been past events, this is trivially true, but doesn't really prove one side or the other. Compatibilists and Libertarians accept that past outcomes cannot be changed as we understand them.

6. "Physical change in the brain can remove your free will."
a. True. If you physically remove my brain altogether, or just manually scramble it up, you can point to my inability to do anything other than stare ahead lifelessly as the removal of my free will. In Gage's case, I'd prefer to think that the environmental factors which regulate his free will effectively modified his you'd like to call it, making him more likely to choose other outcomes. The issue here is it relies on an understanding of our consciousness which we really don't have. Whether you subscribe to dualism, monism, or pluralism cannot come from rationalism or material reductionism because they inherently describe phenomena that are extra-material. I imagine as a hard-determinist you also accept the idea that the mind/consciousness is purely an effect of perception or something of the sort. That is, you don't believe that subjective experience exists anywhere outside of objective reality, but that statement in and of itself would likely take me weeks to unpack... so let's just both not go there... If I'm wrong (which I'm pretty sure I'm not), then it follows you must subscribe to some idea where the mind and subjective experience exists as well as objective reality.

With that being said... I've fairly overstayed my welcome and I strongly doubt anyone will get this far. So I'll call it here and see if there's any good discussion to be had. Thanks!

[zyxwfish]

Your video proves compatibilism or “soft determinism” is true. I was in the camp of believing “hard determinism” for around 15 years. We would have to really analyze what the implications of true hard determinism would be and there are many. For one, if human choice was true hard determinism a concept of determinism or free will would not have arisen in the mind. In order for a measurement to be made there has to be change. For example let’s say in the universe it was a uniform 70°F everywhere at all times and nothing could be done to change the temperature. If this were true a concept of temperature would have never arisen because it couldn’t be known since it’s unchanging. If hard determinism was actually true it would be impossible to find truth since error or non error could not be differentiated. Even if evidence and logic could arise from determinism the results could never be taken seriously because truths could never be known objectively since the observations to find truths, could never be trusted even if the evidence appears to lean one way or the other. Statements such as “I” or “you” would be impossible because there would be nobody there to make a choice. If hard determinism was true anyone could commit any crime and be innocent since they couldn’t have done otherwise. Going to the opposition end of the spectrum, libertarian free will, if this were true a concept of free will or determinism would also not have arisen. True libertarian free will would equal infinity.
A mind damaged by tumors or brain injury lowers free, just as hunger or caffeine withdrawals etc. These leaves the third but very boring third option, soft determinism… If true hard determinism was true a YouTube video describing it could never be taken seriously but then again under hard determinism there would be no one there to make or view the video.
Seeing brains make decisions early before we physically show evidence that we have made them doesn’t actually count as evidence for hard determinism. Since we can do the experiment and observe the results negates hard determinism. The choice to agree on evidence it’s self is rendered meaningless if hard determinism is true and would negate not only that experiment but all sensory input for being evidence of anything. We put faith that our senses aren’t totally lying to us and these concepts would be totally impossible if hard determinism was true.

[steveellis]

Don't get me wrong. Though believing in free will would be comforting, I'm 100% a determinist. However, I take issue with the pysiological-psychology experiment you referenced. It's a moot point and doesn't in my opinion bolster the argument for a deterministic world at all. It doesn't matter whether choice is made in the conscious or the pre-conscious, it can be just as free and undetermined whether made before or after the decision maker is aware of making the decision. Whether conscious of it or not, the person making the choice is still the "agent" of that choice, the only relevant question is whether his choosing was determined or "free". The only germane arguments on the issue are those rooted in an exercise of logic. The issue cannot be "proven" one way or the other.
JMHO, but I'm right. :)

[villvis]

The universe is largely deterministic. Free will exists but its not what you think it is. We exist in an ever collapsing probability cloud. As time unfolds the permutations decrease. The ideas that you get are not your own, they arise from your environment. So where does free will exist if we are determined to have ideas that originate from outside ourselves? When was the first time you exercised free will? It is and was free will when you reject the ideas and impulses that come to you. The first time you said "No" was your first act of free will.

[mckillaterp]

I’m not seeing why the last example about subconscious choice preceding an apparent conscious choice precludes free will. Regardless of which part of the mind makes the choice you, as an agent (a mind) made that choice. Maybe I’m missing something but that still seems like free will and agency to me.

[DrGoodcap]

Actually, Plato and Aristotle never directly tackled this question . Aristotle made the distinction between voluntary and involuntary actions, and probably believed in what we would now call “free will” . But I believe Epicurus was the first to actually tackle the question by talking about how men could act freely despite living in a mechanical, atomistic world . His solution was the “indeterministic swerve” which led to some freedom in a deterministic world .

[Fit_AF_]

Excellent explanation on the debate of Determinism Vs. Freewill, thank you 🙏🏾

[Yomi-san]

Isn’t it obvious that there are many factors that determine how we decide? If you know all the variables and a ruleset you can predict what choice will be made (or need to add in a variable or rule you missed).

[vialarmsecurityandfire]

8 minutes of my life I won't get back

[extraorchidinary]

You dont have two identical subjects with identical physical environmental and emotional condition to prove by their same choices that free will does not exist, but you have millions of cases where some or few conditions are same but still people take different choices and make different decisions.

[KarmicWealth]

Thank you for this. One of the clearest explanations.

[DanielL]

I totally agree but I think there is a simpler more direct line of insight to arrive a the absurdity of free will (which I will recast as free choice). Free choice is a logical contradiction. It has nothing to do with Quantum Mechanics, probability, cause and
effect or neurology and psychology. Its a direct and obvious contradiction in terms. A choice (which is what our brains do, choose from options that is) is necessarily constrained by factors and considerations which make up the branches of the algorithm that your brain uses to make those choices. No constraints, no algorithm = no choice. So yes we do have the power of choice, just not 'free' choice. What would that even mean. It is in fact, meaningless. I wouldn't want free choice if it could even exist in principle. My choices are all nicely constrained or I would not be able to survive for 5 minutes. Who would want randomness (which is noise in information theory) to enter into their algorithm. But even when it does, and it does .... it is deterministic in nature. Just not predictable. And that's where people get confused. Count your blessings that you have no free will.

[Maxrodon]

My take on determinism is a combination of the "buttefly effect" and the view that nothing is truly random but rather we don't understand it well enough to accurately predict it's behaviour.

So we can agree that simple things like rain originated from water evaporating and condesating so we can say the rain was a pre-determined butterfly effect of water evaporating and going back was pre-determined by the water being present so it could evaporate and so on. If you keep going back all the way to the start of time, you will see that the rain we speak of now was the result of consecutive events from the start of time up until that very moment when it rained. Due to that series of events the rain came about.

Now we can apply this to alot of other things around us like historical events such as the World Wars, the launch of the internet, covid, or your great great grand parent missing their train. All these thing will contribute to events that result in the events we are face and experience today. Todays event's were pre-determined by the event's of the past. Even your childhood and where/how you live your life will affect how your life will be in future so your future self is pre-determined by your past self and past event before you even existed.

As for how we think. I believe we have a "play book" in our brains. That's the set of methods/rules/steps your brain will follow for interpeting different things. Some of chapters in the "play book" are common across our minds which is how people can "think alike" or can be "predicteable" or put into psycological groups that match them. Mind illusionists, Media, Art/Music, Education systems, Politicians, fashion, use this to connect to a wide audiance. Then there are the chapters that are unique to you and gives you your unique personality and unique thought. But just because it's unique, it doesn't mean it's "tindependent". It was formulated as a result of past events externally as well as biological/genetic/chemical events in your body from the moment you were concieved till now. You had no "independent" influence on any of those things and yet they contribute to define and pre-determine how you think. So in other words the same way a computer is "programmed" to operate, meaning it's way of thinking was pre-determined/pre-defined, our minds were also pre-programmed to think and behave the way they do now from the point we were created. It was pre-determined. If you gave a computer a file to process, it's the same as asking someone to make a decision on something. In both cases an input is processed using a pre-determined "processor/play book/way of thinking" to create an outcome. Our "freewill" is the Playbook and if that is pre-determined then our choice is pre-determined as the result would have always been the same. Even the idea of making a random choice was actually a processed choice and is not as random as we think

To summarise, our brain has a playbook pre-determined by enviromental and biological factors while the input our brain processes for making our decisions, are also pre-determined events.So there is no true "free will". even our thought now are the results of processes based on pre-defined events and a pre-defined way of thininking. On a slightly different note, it also means everything is pre-determined all life events now and still to come is pre-determined.

[truthseeker]

None of the arguments you have given against free will I find incontrovertible...what convinces me that there is no free will is that it is logically incoherent ...either we do things for a reason, or we do them for no reason(randomly) this is a true dichotomy, neither gives you free will. Even if you are a dualist...does your soul do something for a reason or for no reason - same - neither gives you free will.

[Muslimman]

Great video very well spoken a little tip get a cheap 20$ boya mic or if you have one in adobe premium drag and drop the denoise effect on your audio