Galen Strawson - Mysteries of Free Will

Our human sense is that our will is fully free. Our scientific sense is that every action is determined by a prior action. Free will versus determinism is a big question without clear answer.

[Rhea]

Marvelous .. 🤩
"Man can do what he wills .. but he cannot will what he wills." - A. Schopenhauer

[amorfati]

Brilliant man - he gets it - but then again, you can't really give him credit for it, because he didn't chose to be that way=)

[michaelferketic]

Free will is the ability to control the focus of your attention. I watch all the brilliant minds talk about this and everyone keeps it so abstract and dances around any specificity. That's why I wrote a book called The Definition of Free Will - & a model of attention. Free will is the ability to control focal energy distribution patterns

[MultiAdamowski]

absolutely agree. no matter what you have inside (material particles or eternal soul) your decision is based on just that and you cannot escape yourself.

[hvghfgetr]

P1 - The way you are (all things considered) will determine how you will act in any situation (being -> doing)
P2 - To be truly responsible for the way you act, you have to be responsible for the way you are
C - Freedom is impossible because one cannot step outside of the P1 (being -> doing) paradigm.

[BrianSDare]

Could an illustration be helpful here?

We are all in a river. We cannot help but be influenced by the currents. But we could be in a log just floating along, or we can be in a boat with a paddle. 

All of us have that paddle, and we can choose to use it or not. No matter what we cannot escape the currents river, but we can indeed influence how we navigate the river, and every responsible human does.

[brnbx]

It's a slippery thing to square one's *feeling/experience* of free will with what reason reveals to be a complicated but (seemingly?) deterministic process surrounding them. What does it mean to be conscious without free will? Why be aware if it plays no causal factor among all the other processes (including one's own) that are being undertaken?

The one thing that might be a worthwhile analogy to consider is that of a character in a story. Any book you might read is, obviously, already written before you read it. However, when you read it you are (as any other time and place in life) doing it in the present, "now". (Let's not bring up any notions of relativity, yet, heh.) This is the slice of time and space we're ever consciously aware of (setting aside any illusory construct it might *actually* be for now, too). So, as you read about this character, you are reading about them in the story as it were "now". You can feel how they feel, follow their thoughts and actions (plus all the antecedent events that the character might not even be aware of, either). However, all of it was written prior to your experience of reading it as your "now". What does that make for our personal significance, and so on? I don't know.

However, instead of removing responsibility or a feeling of causal efficacy in life, it in fact widens the scope. You are part of the vast unfolding of not only your life and actions, but everyone else's past, present, and future. We would have to start thinking of ourselves as a unit, a whole, part of an entire universe of unfolding actualization. You get to experience it.

A YouTube commentary is probably not the best place to expound on things that probably deserve way more space and consideration, but I guess I was compelled to say this for whatever reason, because the Big Bang, right?

[joachim]

I really don't see how we could've free will. When I walk and I have a random thought coming to my mind I didn't have any choice in the matter. Don't think there's much differences when I have a choice to make. It's still just a thought coming to my mind.

[benadam]

We are informed by our past selves when we call on our memories to guide the present, but we also inform our past selves when we reflect on our past errors and so change ourselves in the present.

[dogsdomain]

This is by far the best argument agains free will

[eddieking]

"Can we become conscious of an unconscious thought?
~Sam Harris

[dfpolis]

Strawson's argument is unsound. Here are the difficulties with it, point by point:

1. It is true that we do what we do because we have the power to do it, but to say that "the way we are" prior to the choice predetermines what we choose, requires one to assume determinism. As Strawson admits, experience tells us that being a free agent is part of "the way we are." To be a free agent is to be the radical source of new lines of action, where "radical source" means that the new line of action is not fully immanent (pre-determined) before the agent chooses. Clearly, Strawson is begging the question.

2. If A is responsible for how B is, and B is a free-will agent, that does not mean that A is responsible for what B chooses in the sense of implicitly determining what B chooses. A is only responsible for making B a free-will being.

There is also an equivocation on "responsible" here. In premise 1 it means responsible for what is chosen by B, but in premise 2, it means responsible for making B a free-will agent. While one might argue when A makes B free, A assumes responsibility for B's free acts, that is a separate argument. It is precisely a separate argument because the meaning of "responsible" in 1 and 2 is different.

3. Of course, A cannot be responsible for how A is made, but that is irrelevant if A is made a free-will agent.

In sum, the argument is unsound because it begs the question and has an undistributed middle (because of the equivocation).

[ivanoliveira]

The problem is with P1. He smuggles in an assumption that the way we are ENTAILS one action rather than another.

[dannyvalastro]

Can you pick and choose who we are born

[rovosher]

Pleasantly surprised that this renowned Hume scholar talks about “who we are.”
To a great extent this is more a neurological theme than a question of identity. We may becoming the added connections of the various neutrons that are integrated into our brain as we live on to experience. From that point of view the freedom of the will is pretty much a daily re-evaluation of our views about who we are.

[mattsigl]

With every CHOICE I more and more determine what I am, and what I Am is a thing that makes choices. If I am not wholly predictable to myself and if there is no ultimate explanation for what my choices are outside of my choosing them (including to myself) than my choices are truly free.

[landonech]

"We do what we do because of the way we are...all things considered." Alright. An aspect of "the way we are" is freedom of the will.

[Dystisis]

This ideal of "fundamental, ultimate responsibility" is not the same as action, though. We say something has the responsibility if it is the most salient and sensitive factor in a system giving rise to some phenomenon. Obviously there will always be underlying factors that are necessary for that system in the first place, but that's not what we mean by "action".

[treemustach]

The issue I have with this is that, yes, we do not have free will in what we definitely want to will and be (in terms of being and that we are humans) but we are sentient beings within a set parameter of choice, the choices that we get to choose from in that we are humans. As human beings there will be certain factors that we "must" follow because of our makeup and how we are "structured" but within those parameters we have free will. For example, becoming an addict means that we can't seem to not do drugs/drink alcohol, but the reality is that we can stop doing those things if we truly wanted to. There are boundaries to stop us from doing drugs and drinking, but the structure has become a lot more difficult because we are humans and how the human body reacts to the structure that we are given. Despite that, within our structure, that means we have free will within it. So we don't have have ultimate free will, but we have free will within the parameters given to us.

[amirhesamnoroozi]

Wow, I did not know an argument as such.... Amongst all the scientific controversy and quarrel around the subject, this is quite a new approach.