Michael Shermer | Jordan Peterson: Is There Free Will?

Michael Brant Shermer (born September 8, 1954) is an American science writer, historian of science, founder of The Skeptics Society, and editor-in-chief of its magazine Skeptic, which is largely devoted to investigating pseudoscientific and supernatural claims.

Jordan B Peterson (born June 12, 1962) is a Canadian clinical psychologist and professor of psychology at the University of Toronto.

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[PhilosophyInsights]

What do you think about the compatibilist solution to free will and determinism?

[m_b_lmackenzie]

"--Do you believe in Free Will?
--I have no choice"

C. Hitchens

[ironmanjakarta]

Why would you ruin your grocery shopping experience by going on a full stomach.

[kewlkrew]

The only secular argument for free will is I don't really like the alternative"

[chewyjello]

In Buddhism it's understood that there are two realities. The practical and the deeper. Both are needed. The practical so you can pay your mortgage on time and the deeper to bring perspective and meaning to your life.

And as Yuval Harari says, people who believe in free will are the easiest to manipulate because they believe that the locust of control is always within.

[rosscarlson]

When they talk about "more determined" or "less determined", it seems to me that they are not talking about degrees of freedom as Shermer puts it. Rather, they are talking about behaviors that are more or less predictable by humans. In my view, the addict's behavior is just as determined as the non-addict's behavior, but we humans can better predict the future behavior of the addict.

[seanmolloy]

Michael Shermer is completely and willfully missing the point. He starts from the position that Free Will exists and then ignores any evidence to the contrary. 'If I'm hungry I will buy unhealthy foods, and if I'm not I'm less less likely to do so...therefore I choice to buy when I'm full' This ignores the fact that he has LEARNED these truths in a Deterministically arrived way/universe that informed and even Determined his understanding and mindset. He didn't make the choice....his experiences did!!!! HE was NEVER in charge of those

[markportnoy]

Yes. When we walk out the door we don't know what's going to happen. Choices are up for grabs, no matter how limited they are.

[redonwight]

Albert einstein said "if you can't explain simply you dont understand well enough"

This is why I think Jordan is genius of our time.

[musicproductioncentral]

Both guys in the video dont really understand the concept they speak of. I also notice in the comments that around 70 percent of people dont understand what free will or determinism really means. For myself, Its something you have to think quite deeply about for a long period of time to truly understand. I mean many years. At least for me. But i do now understand we do not have free will.

[jmfp]

Saying we have no freewill is self defeating. If we didn't have it we wouldn't know it. Saying "I know we have no freewill "and then proceeding to try and change someone else's mind about it assumes they have a will they can control and when presented with good evidence can choose to accept the new information to come to a conclusion they believe is closer to the truth. I dont even think the idea is worth entertaining. It's not as if I am wrong it would make a difference so why bring it up.

[AnonyMous-ogct]

The problem I find with at least religious notions of free will is that it tends to make people dismiss all undesirable human behavior as "outright evil", that the devil caused this, and that we should simply pray harder or something like that. I had a very religious mother who was like this and she had a tendency to view the world in this black and white way in ways while simultaneously being extremely judgmental, quick to compartmentalize the people she met and learned about as good or evil while holding never-ending grudges towards those she hastily placed in the "evil" compartment. She also had a difficult time reconciling any evidence that surfaced for the heroes she worshiped which suggested that they may have indeed made many morally reprehensible choices, often wanting to dismiss all such evidence that counteracted her beliefs. She had a very strong hatred of homosexuals, for example, believing they chose to be evil, and actually worked herself towards borderline insanity when a pastor she idolized turned out to be a closet homosexual.

To people who strongly believe in such notions of free will, it's a stance that tends to dismiss history and investigation into the sources of human behavior. Such people probably cannot imagine themselves as anything but heroes if they were born in Nazi Germany when they would have almost certainly been committing atrocities like the rest.

That kind of thinking does not promote investigation into the causes. The people are simply deemed as evil. It doesn't make someone investigate the link behind childhood neglect and abuse in serial killers, for example, since childhood abuse and neglect would be irrelevant if we wanted to believe that everyone is capable of freely choosing, at any given time, independent of their upbringing and psychological state, between good and evil. We'll never get to the bottom of any human behavior if we dismiss it as ultimately rooted in something supernatural.

To be a psychologist as Jordan is already requires foregoing at least this kind of religious notion of free will, since it's all about investigating the sources behind human behavior since a problem without a concrete cause (tied to the material world, i.e.) is one incapable of being remedied through scientific means. It has to acknowledge, to some degree, that any of us could have been a serial killer, for example, if we were born and raised a certain way. It can't simply just dismiss that as a matter of some choice independent of all such variables.

[josephmassaro]

The only way determinism will really matter is if society adopts it as the rule by which we govern ourselves. Outside of that, it's a metaphysical musing that currently has no real world use. An amusing analogy is a discussion between Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson concerning the Earth revolving around the Sun and it's importance to Holmes.

"But the Solar System!" I protested.

"What the deuce is it to me?" he interrupted impatiently; "you say that we go round the sun. If we went round the moon it would not make a pennyworth of difference to me or to my work."

And I think, for almost all of us, that is the significance of determinism in our own daily lives.
It doesn't matter if it's how things are since it has no significance in our lives and how we live.
If Homes worked in outer space or the movement of solar bodies was important to his work as a a detective then he would care and incorporate it. It doesn't so he doesn't and life goes on.

[Jaikay]

Am I missing something with this part? - 'Free will and responsibility, maybe they don't exist, but if we don't build societies that assume they exist, the societies become unstable very rapidly, to me that's a kind of evidence that they do exist' - I disagree, if they don't exist and determinism is true - we're not building societies ASSUMING they exist, because we're just living out a deterministic reality, so we aren't assuming anything, it would've happened anyway and we believe we're doing it ourselves. That seems like a really obvious flaw from Jordan there.

[hansenarel]

Answer the damn question !! Too much talking, nothing really meaningful.

[IdentifiablePerson]

It is very easy to understand that we do not have freewill. We do not take any action without any reason. That means our reasons control our actions. So our actions are not free. Since reasons come before we take action, our present action is controlled by our past reasons.

Suppose we have two choices A and B. We sequentially perform the analysis on our choices, because mind only works sequentially. We first take A, and then decide to accept or reject it, based on our reasons. Therefore, as explained in the previous paragraph, this action is not free. If we select A, then we reject B or do not consider B at all. Thus again we do not have freewill for our choices. All choices are based on reasons and therefore are not based on freewill. Choosing is an action, and therefore cannot be free.

[daveshongkongchinachannel]

Free will cannot be meaningfully discussed in such terms by mainstream science. The driving down the road scenario could just as easily be a sequence of micro events that fell into place one by one since birth, to put you on the road at that time and react to all the predetermined stimuli in the way that you do. To find the answer to free will we need to go into the area of philosophy and that is a huge leap of faith for most people, especially those with a logical or scientific background. We have to go beyond this physical reality and beyond the time/space dimension. We also have to trust intuition. By the very way our civilization operates we assume people are responsible for their actions, we seem to know that on a deeper level. Otherwise how can we punish someone for something they had no control of. Of course you could say that is also predetermined but I think it's not that simple.
This is even more relevant in light of recent events with the blame culture and BLM etc. Ironically BLM and other movements would no longer have any meaning if everything was predetermined as would all protests of any kind. But society would fall apart in other ways if people assumed they weren't responsible for their actions.

[troymcg]

Call the deterministic world a set. Free will exists, but does not change the future events within the determined set, rather moves one laterally into another different determined set. Every act of free will creates a new determined set of events.

[jameskolan]

So was Shermer interviewing Peterson or vice versa? I would have enjoyed this more if there was more balance in the participants' speaking times.

[DeadEndFrog]

people who can't destinguish determinism from fatalism shouldn't debate these things. The claim determinism makes is diffrent from fatalisms claim.
In determinism one acts according to previous causes, which ironically enough is the whole basis for psychology in humans..
Fatalism says that certain outcomes are 'fated', and therfor there is nothing you can do that will change that outcome.