Physics & Philosophy: A Conversation with Tim Maudlin (Episode #318)

Sam Harris speaks with Tim Maudlin about the foundations of physics and metaphysics. They talk about the nature of scientific reductionism, emergence, functionalism, the nature of time, presentism vs eternalism, causation, the nature of possibility, the laws of nature, David Lewis’s possible worlds, rival interpretations of quantum mechanics, free will, and other topics.

Tim Maudlin is Professor of Philosophy at NYU and the Founder and Director of the John Bell Institute for the Foundations of Physics. He has a BA in Physics and Philosophy from Yale and a PhD in History and Philosophy of Science from the University of Pittsburgh. He is a Guggenheim Fellow and fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Science, and the author of books on the foundations of physics, logic, and foundations of mathematics. His books include Quantum Non-Locality and Relativity, Truth and Paradox, The Metaphysics Within Physics, Philosophy of Physics: Space and Time, and Philosophy of Physics: Quantum Theory.

May 1, 2023

[bb-he]

Frustrating to listen to a very intelligent person who is completely confused about free will. Tim totally missed the plot. "I'm free to choose between strawberry and chocolate, but I didn't choose my preferences to begin with." Oh boy...

[alf]

Tim Maudlin talked in circles and failed to address the implications of Sam's main points.

[Oilskin]

This guest is insufferably closed minded, he needs meditation

[coachafella]

Tim Maudlin was both condescending and superficial. Locke and Hume are hardly the last word in deciding the question of free will. He appeared to be utterly unwilling or incapable of seeing beneath the most obvious aspects of our mental process of making choices. As it seems whenever I listen to a compatibilist it comes down to "I feel like I have free will therefore I do." But we know for certain that decisions are made in the brain before we're aware we've made them, actions initiated prior to us being conscious that we are about to act. The chain of causality is very complex, but it's unbroken, and there is no link of freedom in there manipulated by some unencumbered conscious emperor who objectively weighs all the factors and then tells the brain the final ruling. Sam has a far greater grasp of the actual process and did a very good job of exposing the apologist Maudlin.

[gavaniacono]

Good to hear Sam express his uncertainty about determinism. Being uncertain is extremely under rated, and necessary.

[IndridCold]

Honestly, I'm not in any way qualified to measure the accuracy of Tim's positions (surprise), but I can say I really disliked his tendency to dismiss points of view he'd obviously never interacted with. Nice episode though

[rustyosgood]

Unimpressed with loquacious Maudlin. I struggled with the word soup Tim throws out (somewhat condescendingly) by changing the context at every logical constraint Sam proposes. Sam plants a logical flag and Maudlin pulls it out of the ground and walks away...WTF? I struggled with the framing and the replies. The discussion about "free will" went the same way. The cause and effect discourse was happening on two different levels of discourse. Tim seems incapable of following the logic that normally disambiguates the context. He jumps the context right back to where he wants to drag the discourse. If one were to ask why the guy robbed the bank, Maudlin would say, "because he was a bad guy" and Sam would say, "it was determined by the particles in his brain, within the environment at the time". The reason free will is incompatible with determinism is that the degree of "freedom" of any "choice" is limited by the constituent matter thereof. That one makes any particular choice is constrained by the particular arrangement of their particles....nothing more. Maudlin's argument against this is that he can't explain why he does things...seems to miss the point. I am frequently perplexed by how some "intelligent" people can still fall short on such simple things...like I frequently do when arguing with my wife. To Maudlin's credit, he did correctly elucidate the (often misused, "Copenhagen Interpretation") by disassociating an observation from consciousness. An observation in the context of the Einstein (PDR) vs. Copenhagen has only to do with some sort of interaction in the physical sense. All observations in this sense require an interaction while a conscious observer can do so purely passively.

[anewman]

Any time Sam gets very specific about the human brain and its wiring goes right over this poor philosophers head. Then Tim contradicts himself saying because he is living according to preferences he has no part in tuning he is 'free'. The guy's not a real scientist, why is he allowed to talk about these things professionally?

[mitchkahle]

I think a 4-D "being" looking at our 3-D universe would likely see everything happening together. The direction and velocity of all the various interacting matter likely "determines" (quantum uncertainty) everything that happens at every point (vector) in 3D space.

[antib_reader]

Mr Sam Harris, you are very wise man 🙏🌞

[SherKhan]

@24:00 Math realm couldn’t be independent of physical realm— numbers as concepts don’t exist until someone has a perception of a physical thing.

[Atttuner]

Tim is just a semantic labelling academic he fails to acknowledge or tackle the scope of the problems Sam is raising

[johnhumberstone]

You let him off the hook there, @Sam Harris, at 2:13:00. Maudlin said that he created a list from the films he liked. The question did not ask him to do that. He could have used a list of films he hated or films with actors he liked and so on. He said earlier, using that particular list did not affect he free will but it does, hugely. He will have no idea why he choose to pick a film from a list of films he like and that, simply underlines the point of his lack of free will.

[Gottenhimfella]

I've been reading Gibbon on the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.
The key forces were not the barbarians at the gate, but the disfunction within the gates.
The suspension of objective critical thinking by the people (the P in SPQR) was a crucial factor in allowing those forces to gain sway.
If Carlson has an audience from here forward, I'd say America is done.

[pjaworek]

Yikes, the point is going over my head for the first 20min.

[alexandrenr]

It says 2013 in description should be May 1 2023

[splitkostanjeuma]

Yes, more stuff like this. Going back to your roots.

[nenirouvelliv]

I just realized I'm not currently on Sam's subscriber feed.

[AskEpic]

Seems really attached to his thoughts. I never know what I’m going to decide and I always change my perspective on things. The fact that I’m always changing means I can’t really point to a reason, it was a derivative of me but I’m a function of time/karma, paradoxically in that I just named a reason 😅.

[mr.k]

What Sam does not understand (or for some unknown reason refuses to understand) is the fact that only because you don’t know where a thought came from, this does not mean that it is beyond your decision making apparatus. We may just not know (YET!) why we behave this way.
He regularity uses the word “mystery” to describe this and somehow spins an argument against free will out of it. How?? It’s like saying that a thunder is the voice of god or whatever, only because you don’t know the physics behind it (YET!) and now you are drawing unprovable conclusions.
If every science would work that way, it would be called religion.
Sam is drawing a conclusion in the middle of an experiment.
There are no real evidence for the absence of free will. You always have to consider that you, as a human, are simply not sophisticated enough to fit trough the rabbit hole and find the reason. This does NOT mean that there IS no reason. Keep searching!!