Should we believe in free will? | Roger Penrose, Galen Strawson, Brian Greene, Daniel Dennett...

Leading philosophers and scientists discuss whether free will is an illusion.

Featuring Roger Penrose, Galen Strawson, Brian Greene, Daniel Dennett, Hannah Dawson, Michael Shermer, Julian Baggini and Helen Steward.

00:00 Introduction
00:42 Galen Strawson
03:39 Hannah Dawson
07:59 Roger Penrose
12:07 Helen Steward
14:56 Daniel Dennett
18:44 Brian Greene & Michael Shermer
21:25 Julian Baggini

#DeterministicProcess #IsFreeWillAnIllusion #FreeWillAndTheSelf

Links to the debates and talks in order of appearance:

Galen Strawson - Free will is a necessary illusion (2022)

Hannah Dawson - In search of freedom (2020)

Sir Roger Penrose - In-depth Interview on Gravity and Quantum Mechanics

Helen Steward and Daniel Dennett - The freedom paradox (2020)

Brian Greene and Michael Shermer - The end of everything (2022)

Julian Baggini - In search of freedom (2020)

[lukewormholes]

when i listen to free will discussions and debates i always imagine a group of scientists in the 1500s debating the true nature of reality well before gravity, relativity, electromagnetism, gravity, and QM had been formulated. I imagine they were confident in their positions and must have debated passionately; but in hindsight they didn't even know the right questions to ask much less what the answers to those questions might even begin to look like

[althepalno]

Roger Penrose section was great - see how he played 'paper rock scissors' as a boy! An example of a true genius.

[BiswarupRay]

The problem of free will is exactly the same as the hard problem of consciousness.
What is the need for us to be conscious if life is governed by deterministic laws of physics?

[squamish]

To the first guy: you can develop just as much of an emotional dependency on the idea of determinism. It can be comforting to believe that your actions cannot unfold any other way than they do. Or than they did. You can be less tormented by regrets and less freaked out by a universe where your choices matter.

[GJurnak]

If you do not believe in free will, but that everything is deterministic, then you must accept that your belief in determinism is not a result of a logical analysis of evidence, but predetermined. Therefore your argument is moot and just a rationalization of a predetermined outcome. This alone does not render the argument false, however it would apply equally to those proposing the opposite view. This would lead to the supposition that no point of view on any issue can be justified.

[thstroyur]

This video strongly shows, more than anything else, that whether or not free-will exists seems to play second fiddle to the question as to whether or not academicians and media pundits are really, _really_ free to hold the position that it might...

[susanarupolo]

Thank you all of you. Again I can see how wonderful and different we, called humans, are. I have chosen to be happy and responsible of my actions . I accept what everyone is saying as sign of respect. To LIVE is a constant challenge!!

[reginod]

Has Dennett ever discussed free will with Robert Sapolsky? That would be a fascinating conversation.

[naturalisted]

No matter what we choose, our choices are informed by our past experiences, and by our limited ability to see the long-term effects of our choices, and by whatever did or did not occur to us, or what we happened to remember or not.

[Cpt_Guirk]

Free will is outside the scope of science. Science makes quantifiable predictions about the phenomena we observe but has no theory about the mind and what exists beyond phenomena. Dennett added some nuance with the idea that we need to be able to make predictions about the possible outcomes to choose between alternatives. Knowledge of deterministic laws is required to will a particular outcome into existence. A pitcher has to understand the laws of motion to throw a curveball that hits the strike zone.

[brothermine]

It depends on what's meant by free will.
If it only means that no one else can force you to behave the way they want you to behave, that's true for the moment, but is subject to change when upcoming discoveries in neuroscience are weaponized into tools of mind control.
If it refers to something more fundamental, free will would require something "supernatural" or outside the known laws of physics. If the universe is entirely deterministic then there can't be a fundamental free will. If the universe is deterministic except for the quantum randomness accepted in many interpretations of quantum mechanics, that too doesn't allow for free will because random choices aren't free choices.
It wouldn't make much sense to change the justice system to not hold anyone accountable for their behavior based on the conclusion that their behavior isn't free. This is because the knowledge that you're likely to be sufficiently punished constrains the behavior of most people. Similarly, knowledge of one's dependency on other people and belief that people will reward good behaviors and shun bad behaviors constrains the behavior of most people.

[xslxvbm]

This idea of freedom is simply an awareness of the ability to select your desire, when the time provides you the ability to take it. (All desire has cause).

She was not free to sit there and talk about free will she was driven through the mixture of all her past time to be there in that moment talking about freewill in the way that she was. That was her desire provided for at that moment in time.

The cake or charity dilemma did not have free will to pick a side but merely was aware of the closeness of two conflicting causes while his brain figured out the stronger of the close-nit two. The brain works harder requiring more effort and energy when two conflicting causes are closely-nit. This gives the temporary feeling of a dilemma.

[PhatLvis]

The statement "You do what you do because you are who you are" is not a proof against free will - rather, it merely points out limits to free will. It is the same statement as, "You cannot flap your arms and fly like a bird does."

[spacesciencelab]

I am very curious now about how freewill works within Roger's CCC theory. :)
Since basically the same happened in the previous universe and into the infinite past, you know the hawking radiation from black holes and the universe forgetting its size ie conformal geometry and starting a new big bang then it makes me think there is a fractal nature to this. And in fractals, you get self similarities. A fractal is quite similar to determinism because you can see a repeating pattern and predict that it'll be the same patten as it goes on. So, that being said, I've came to a conclusion that freewill is fractal like with the self similarity aspect. Free will may be determined BUT because of the self similarity then it is not determined to a high degree of determinism. For example, a galaxy contains many fractals ie its stars but they aren't exactly the same pattern, self similar patterns! You know, b stars, red giant stars to dwarf stars, neutron stars, etc. I think freewill is similar.

But then we have the block universe which just pretty much makes you ponder that free will doesn't exist at all. Past, present AND future all exist simultaneously in the block universe. I really like the analogy that our experience of time is like that of a DVD. We know the future events exist on the DVD. So, all our brains are doing is being a DVD player, constructing time passing linearly.

Though, I think freewill can still exist in a block universe, just not choices that are within the present because the choice you made tomorrow is already set in stone. It has already happened just like the ending of a movie has already happened even though you're only at the start of a movie.

So, how could freewill work in this? I don't know but I will assume that we must have made those choices otherwise how would they be set in stone? It makes me ponder that there must be another you in the future in your future present. Or, we must take into consideration that space-time is just so bizarre and that somehow when the big bang happened events were recorded from the previous aeon like information stored in dna. With Roger's ccc theory this would makes sense since the previous aeon prior to this one and the one before it and the one before that one was self similar, so events in those previous universes, ie our lives were also self similar. This must be true because in ccc theory each time a new aeon arises, the conditions had to be similar for hawking radiation to evaporate from the last supermassive black holes and subsequently that hawking radiation and the conformal geometry is what starts a new big bang. Maybe this is why we experience dejavu! So, our choices were made in the past!

[maistvanjr]

I have defended Strawson's argument from objections in "Concerning the Resilience of Galen Strawson's Basic Argument" (Phil Studies, 2011). I have offered a defense of hard determinism in "A Rationalist Defense of Determinism" (Theoria, 2021)

[stephenlawrence]

Whether we have free will or not depends on how you define it. But for us to have free will it MUST be defined in a way compatible with determinism. This is because indeterminism cannot possibly make any difference. Also because the illusion that indeterminism could is only a mistake over what it is to have options we can select.
The thing is if we define free will in a way compatible with determinism we should take the consequences seriously. For me to make good choices next week, I need the universe to have been set up in the distance past so that the one physically possible future I can get to from there is to do so.
That is completely out of my hands and we should treat ourselves and each other accordingly.
This is why getting free will right matters.

[samjon]

Do I misunderstand her, or did Hannah Dawson defend the technical claim of determinism by appealing to her experience of choosing chocolate over celery and following her mother’s career? If so, is her argument refuted by examples of people who don’t follow their parents’ career paths? What of someone making a choice between brownies and chocolate chip cookies? (I understand that in the main she is arguing that we should behave as if we have freedom.)

[deuteros]

What is wired right? What is the fundamental difference between a person with a tumor and one without one?

[JCO]

Interesting, but the bigger question is how many angels can dance on the head of a pin.

[spacesciencelab]

OUR CHOICES WERE MADE IN THE PAST. Past, present AND future all exist simultaneously in the block universe. I really like the analogy that our experience of time is like that of a DVD. We know the future events exist on the DVD. So, all our brains are doing is being a DVD player, constructing time passing linearly.

Though, I think freewill can still exist in a block universe, just not choices that are within the present because the choice you made tomorrow is already set in stone. It has already happened just like the ending of a movie has already happened even though you're only at the start of a movie.

So, how could freewill work in this? I don't know but I will assume that we must have made those choices otherwise how would they be set in stone? It makes me ponder that there must be another you in the future in your future present. Or, we must take into consideration that space-time is just so bizarre and that somehow when the big bang happened events were recorded from the previous aeon like information stored in dna. With Roger's ccc theory this would makes sense since the previous aeon prior to this one and the one before it and the one before that one was self similar, so events in those previous universes, ie our lives were also self similar. This must be true because in ccc theory each time a new aeon arises, the conditions had to be similar for hawking radiation to evaporate from the last supermassive black holes and subsequently that hawking radiation and the conformal geometry is what starts a new big bang. Maybe this is why we experience dejavu! So, our choices were made in the past!