Nietzsche and the Will to Power

In this lecture we investigate Nietzsche's doctrine of the will to power by contrasting it with materialism, a metaphysical account of the universe which has dominated scientific thought for the last 3 centuries. We also introduce the ideas of Alfred North Whitehead, and point out the similarity between his ideas and Nietzsche's.

[mariaexnox]

i think the title should be more something like "materialism and nietzsche's response" - but this video still helped me understand the concept much better!! thank you :)

[raoul]

The Tao Te Ching best describes the dynamic of material and immaterial
‘We build a house but it is the empty space within in which we live.’ We are surrounded by the objective material but we experience life as an subjective and immaterial.

[alexrichter]

I'm an Ultradarwinist, therefore I think the first biological and scientific instinct is the will to survive. But thru this will to survive, the will to power comes into play, because the man with the most power is the most likely to survive. If somebody is more powerful than you are, he could kill you at any moment, and nobody will bother, so if your survival instinct is great enough, you will fear that powerlessness, and then try to dominate it. It's how humans dominated nature, and how overpower each other.

[EfrainMcshell]

philosophy for me is a lullaby for my brain.
In reality if it wasn't for it, life could be worst.
it is like wings.
it makes me see the world in nor just a different way, rather the way of what is worth to be human.
but what a petty that out there most billions of humans do not care about Philosophy.
it is like a best friend.
thanks for your great videos.

[radishpineapple]

The problem with Nietzsche's approach as stated beginning at 8:45 is that, in trying to deduce properties of the basic materials of the universe by just sitting there and thinking, you aren't discovering any new information about the materials, you're just discovering new information about your own mind. It's easy to see how this bias can mislead one into thinking that basic materials have consciousness of their own.

To really discover how a phenomenon works, you must interrogate the phenomenon, not yourself.

The problem of the emergence of life from non-life has been solved. This isn't even a debate. The answer to this problem is emergence. Complexity emerges from the interaction of simpler building-blocks as these interactions produce properties that the building-blocks themselves do not exhibit. Layer upon layer of complexity is build up in a smooth gradient, going from the simplest particles to the most complex multicellular organisms.

Chemistry has shown us how the interactions between many simpler particles can produce complex phenomena. Physical chemistry has shown us how proteins can perform tasks and exhibit properties that the amino acid building blocks do not. Systems biology has allowed us to reveal in great detail the complicated web of interactions in the cell which allow simple stimuli to be transmitted through a signal transduction pathway to produce a coordinated response from the cell as a whole. These cells can then, in turn, be shown to produce further complexity when they interact with each other in multicellular organisms. Study of such model organisms as Caenorhabditis elegans has become so detailed over the decades that we now know not only the organism's entire genome, but we can also follow and explain the fate of each cell going from embryo to adult. After careful study, the entire connectome of the animal's nervous system is known.

The complexity arising from the interactions between individual neurons in neural nets is great, yet for simple cases it is possible to understand the entire network all at once and show how it can exhibit complex behaviors emerging from simpler ones. Due to the exponential increase in interconnections as more neurons are added, it quickly becomes impossible to understand the network in its entirety. However, as the complexity arises in a smooth gradient, the complicated behavior of complex neutral networks can yet be explained as emerging from the many interactions of simpler subsets. The human brain is the most extreme example of this complexity problem, but study of the neurology of the animal kingdom shows how the human brain is just a highly developed instance on the spectrum of brain complexity, which smoothly ranges from the simplest neural networks of jellyfish, to more complex versions inside insects, to yet more complexity in the simplest lancelet, to even more complexity in higher and higher animals all the way to humans. There is no discontinuity.

Today, it is especially ignorant to suppose that, for consciousness to exist, that the sub-components must possess rudimentary consciousness of their own. As research into artificial intelligence catapults forward at an ever-increasing rate, it is plain to see how we are well on our way to producing analogues of animal intelligence in silico. We know for sure that the subcomponents of our artificial neural networks are without consciousness, for we ourselves have created them. From lifeless transistors, to nodes, to static neural networks, and now to deep learning, we humans have begun to create our own artificial intelligence which is impossible to understand all at once. Yet, as its creators, we know that its complexity emerges from underlying simplicity.

Nietzche, in the ignorance of his time, could be forgiven for resorting to panexperientialism. But given what we now know to be true, we in modern times can no longer do so.

[ralfrath-new]

The will to power is dead! Because we have killed the will!

[garrettjames]

Spent 10 minutes watching this cause I need to learn about will to power, and it talks about it for like 30 seconds at the end of the video. The title is misleading.

[markorodokopljev]

Your title is slightly misleading. You din't even refer to Nietsche's book once nor you give a quotes from the book.

[SB-qobf]

Why is every philosophy video's comment section crowded by angry materialists trying to impose their own (depressing) worldview?

[miguelpazos]

Move out to the wilderness. Spend a couple of years under the stars. Without contact with the modern world. Only you, nature, its sounds, and the sky above. You will eventually begin to "see" the truth in this: the fabric of the universe is alive, and is divine. Interconnected. Interactive. Interdependent. And we have extricated ourselves from it at our own peril.

[Madman]

Nietzsche said it was "so much the better" that we realize will to power is only interpretation, because it should make us realize that our cherished "laws of nature" are also only interpretation.

[tturing]

You really do great work. Thank you for sharing your introductions!

[TJMKRK]

Came as a materalist. Still a materialist.

[hyesmam]

I don’t think most people actually read this book all the way through. Probably the wildest book I have ever read.

[sunnygee]

Thank you so much for making this idea so clear!

[Bill]

Your work is richly textured; similar to a book that was rich in texture and narrative. "The Joy of Less: A Minimalist Living Guide" by Matthew Cove

[jnarayan]

absolutely love your videos...very informative and thought provoking!

[duellingdescartes]

You missed king Solomon, long before the Greeks. Newton referred to him as the greatest philosopher who ever lived.

[dancertiffy]

Wow. I think I see the roots of postmodernism here.
Look now at it's effects here in our schools 2017.
Rudimentary Postmodernism roots are on display here and have survived a long journey.

[Chris-civs]

Loving your videos, really great job!