Why Obsess about Free Will? | Episode 1209 | Closer To Truth

Free will probes consciousness, examines what it means to pick, choose, select, decide. But some say that 'free will' is just a trick of the brain. Why is free will important? Featuring interviews with Patrick Haggard, Peter Tse, Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, and Alison Gopnik.

Season 12, Episode 9 - #CloserToTruth

Closer To Truth host Robert Lawrence Kuhn takes viewers on an intriguing global journey into cutting-edge labs, magnificent libraries, hidden gardens, and revered sanctuaries in order to discover state-of-the-art ideas and make them real and relevant.

Closer to Truth 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.

#FreeWill #Consciousness Your source for the study of philosophy and college philosophy class materials.

[koppijn]

If you doubt whether you have free will, you should also doubt whether it is possible to doubt. Because doubting also implies a form of freedom

[davidhughes]

free will is the complexity of the Singular Perspective of self, only hindered though the previous experience of consequence. the only restraint of the will is therefore self-imposed

[jackmabel]

"The physical meat within our head." YES! Great description of the brain.

[davedd]

I like Chomsky's take on free will: We can't explain what free will is, but it feels so real, we just have to believe in it. And since science is far from unlocking all the secrets of the universe, we can't rule out that free will exists, but that the explanation lies beyond our science and understanding.

[jamesruscheinski]

Consciousness works from outside in: free will to free choice to free expression. A choice is free only if made from a free will and an expression is free only if done from a free choice. Matter works from inside out: free expression to free choice to free will. Once an expression from brain, free choice maintains expression as free and free will maintains choice as free. The expression and the person expressing continue freely after the expression.

[jamesruscheinski]

A free will is when nothing stops consciousness from acting on or in someone / something.

[Ravenstudios-so]

Heres a problem with that test that lady is taking by pressing the key, if the test was done on me, i would have already been THINKING before hand on what to push later before i pushed the first one the key word is thinking and thoughts before you press the button

[jamesruscheinski]

Free will might be subconscious activity, rather than conscious activity? Consciousness / awareness also play role, particularly at end of an action, while free will is separate activity of the action?

[jamesruscheinski]

How might a subconscious free will operate in brain? Does the brain block actions, otherwise if not blocked an action moves forward?

[jamesruscheinski]

Is there a free will or choice when it comes to what a person focuses on? Not where a person goes, what a person focuses on where they are at?

[thomson]

(1) If a tire blows out and causes a car to crash, is the tire "responsible" for the crash? What if the tire was defective at the time of its manufacture? What if it was punctured by a sharp object in the road? What does it _mean_ to be "responsible"? (2) What does it matter to a puppet if the strings are on the outside or on the inside? (3) If cause and effect rule all things, what can "freedom" possibly mean? (4) Last, if cause and effect can be suspended so that something _can_ be "free", what is the difference between "freedom" and "chaos"? Isn't chaos the state in which cause and effect do not rule? If one is free in that sense, then one has no control over anything, including what one senses, feels, thinks, or does. In this case, things "just happen" for no reason. So, how would that be preferable to the one who has lost all control? To me, it seems like our situation is either one of total determinism or one of chaos. I don't see how a middle ground can exist. Nor do I see how chaos can be real. So, all that's left is determinism. Welcome to hell, fellow robots.

[hadisaraf]

I think brain is like the schrodinger's cat box. Most of the time the box is closed, no measurment happens and thoughts are in super position state. So Free will is the result of uncertainty inside the brain and different thoughts would happen simultaneously. When you bring the decision into action, in fact you have opened the the box and just one state happens.

[jamesruscheinski]

Free will of actions and choice (substantive) of where to go could come from conscious focus? A conscious focus enables free will actions and substantive choice location? Consciousness itself causes free will actions and substantive choice location, a little like turning on a light, nothing more has to be done for actions to be free will or for location to be a substantive choice?

[dennistucker]

I tend to agree with Walter Sinnott-Armstrong. So much depends on how we define things.

[jamesruscheinski]

conscious choice not always linked to an action? A person can figure out what to do and not do it? however, consciousness awareness of an action when it happens?

[brentonmetzler]

So if I tie you up your free will is gone !? Or just that part of your free will. ?! So there is different free wills. ?!

[-by-_Publishing_LLC]

*"Why Obsess about Free Will?"*

... Some would say we "have no choice" but to obsess about free will.

[LameBushido]

Hi Lawrence! I hope you can delve into continental philosophy at some point. I love the content.

[grnDestiny]

I liked how you started with the Tai chi

[MikeKGullion]

One first has to clarify concepts in the philosophy of identity. What does "I" mean when asking, "Do I have free will?" Can't the unconscious parts of the brain still be considered 'me?"
My thinking is that if you did not consciously will something, your unconscious did. And since people mistakenly identify only their conscious, self-referential experience as “me” or “I, ” and a good argument can be made that our unconscious mind is also “me” or “I, ” my suspicion is that we have some free will.

If one agrees ab initio is a rational methodology for approaching nature’s factuality, then as we break down the brain’s processes involved in free will, we’ll get to anatomy and physiology. And we’ll find that the laws of physics, chemistry and biology will put constraints on what’s allowed and what’s prohibited. But such parameters shouldn’t be viewed as a type of restriction or oppression over a person’s freedom, but what in fact allows and facilitates it in the first place. I suppose it would be akin to a race car driver wanting a fast, powerful engine, but not one “oppressed” by the laws of thermodynamics.

Racer car driver: “I want my engine liberated from such laws of nature.”

Mechanical engineer: “Ah, sir, that’s what allows the engine to function in the first place.”

Similarly, language that requires noun, verb and prepositional phrases might at first seem like an imposition, a constraint on creative writing, but what allows for infinite expression. All of the world’s literature, from Shakespeare to Star Wars, was created from such “restrictions.” As Orson Welles once said, “The enemy of art is the absence of limitations.” A similar quote could be given by a biologist, "The enemy of freedom is the absence of laws of nature." Without physiology, we wouldn't have pattern activity. Without pattern activity, we wouldn't have freedom.