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"In a way, in our contemporary world view, it's easy to think that science has come to take the place of God. But some philosophical problems remain as troubling as ever. Take the problem of free will. This problem has been around for a long time, since before Aristotle in 350 B.C. St. Augustine, St. Thomas Aquinas, these guys all worried about how we can be free if God already knows in advance everything you're gonna do. Nowadays we know that the world operates according to some fundamental physical laws, and these laws govern the behavior of every object in the world. Now, these laws, because they're so trustworthy, they enable incredible technological achievements. But look at yourself. We're just physical systems too, right? We're just complex arrangements of carbon molecules. We're mostly water, and our behavior isn't gonna be an exception to these basic physical laws. So it starts to look like whether its God setting things up in advance and knowing everything you're gonna do or whether it's these basic physical laws governing everything, there's not a lot of room left for freedom.
So now you might be tempted to just ignore the question, ignore the mystery of free will. Say "Oh, well, it's just an historical anecdote. It's sophomoric. It's a question with no answer. Just forget about it." But the question keeps staring you right in the face. You think about individuality for example, who you are. Who you are is mostly a matter of the free choices that you make. Or take responsibility. You can only be held responsible, you can only be found guilty, or you can only be admired or respected for things you did of your own free will. So the question keeps coming back, and we don't really have a solution to it. It starts to look like all our decisions are really just a charade.
Think about how it happens. There's some electrical activity in your brain. Your neurons fire. They send a signal down into your nervous system. It passes along down into your muscle fibers. They twitch. You might, say, reach out your arm. It looks like it's a free action on your part, but every one of those - every part of that process is actually governed by physical law, chemical laws, electrical laws, and so on.
So now it just looks like the big bang set up the initial conditions, and the whole rest of human history, and even before, is really just the playing out of subatomic particles according to these basic fundamental physical laws. We think we're special. We think we have some kind of special dignity, but that now comes under threat. I mean, that's really challenged by this picture.
So you might be saying, "Well, wait a minute. What about quantum mechanics? I know enough contemporary physical theory to know it's not really like that. It's really a probabilistic theory. There's room. It's loose. It's not deterministic." And that's going to enable us to understand free will. But if you look at the details, it's not really going to help because what happens is you have some very small quantum particles, and their behavior is apparently a bit random. They swerve. Their behavior is absurd in the sense that its unpredictable and we can't understand it based on anything that came before. It just does something out of the blue, according to a probabilistic framework. But is that going to help with freedom? I mean, should our freedom be just a matter of probabilities, just some random swerving in a chaotic system? That starts to seem like it's worse. I'd rather be a gear in a big deterministic physical machine than just some random swerving.
So we can't just ignore the problem. We have to find room in our contemporary world view for persons with all that that entails; not just bodies, but persons. And that means trying to solve the problem of freedom, finding room for choice and responsibility, and trying to understand individuality."
Tags: David, Free, Life, Philosophy, Physics, Sosa, Waking, Will,
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January 6th, 2009 at 22:30:48 There's some electrical activity in your brain!
January 6th, 2009 at 22:53:47 I don't think you can deny that we are determined but that isn't the only definition of freedom. If you are free to act on your determined will then you are free. It cannot be denied that if am tied up I'm not free to walk and when unbound I am free to walk. So we are determined but we can also be free.
January 6th, 2009 at 23:16:46 SO in that way I am free willed... I've also come to a possible conclusion. I've come to believe that maybe free will is too complicated for us to understand. It transcends our brain's ability to comprehend it. In that way, free will is something divine. God help me.
January 6th, 2009 at 23:39:45 This question has been gnawing at my brain for weeks. I finally came to accept that even though I may be some kind of machine, at least I'm FREE. At least I don't have any force pushing me down, forcing me to shut up, be quiet. I can, mostly, say what I please.
January 7th, 2009 at 00:02:44 Is-ought problem?
January 7th, 2009 at 00:25:43 If you don't take responsibility for anything, you'll just blur into the background or go out in a blaze. If you can imagine for a while that you have no free will, and during that time you are inspired to do nothing unusual, then I think that indicates you could probably pass for normal.
January 7th, 2009 at 00:48:42 Are you responsible for anything done by you? If not, that would seem to me to be more like possessing an operable will unbound by constraints. Paradoxically, responsibility logically disappears when the "free will" discussed in this video is effectively eliminated from consideration as being anything meaningful. I'm saying that at this point, after going through the same phase of questioning "free will", it's now a paradox to me how people can think like this once they become adults.
January 7th, 2009 at 01:11:41 Let me put it this way: maybe the freedom's mostly in how we can mentally run away from the world, from the competition. So, why do we (idealistically-speaking, ongoing non-meritous consolidations of cronyism aside) compete for limited resources, including labor-limited resources? I think an infinitely better question is why the heck not? So the game is rigged, but that has never meant a rigged game is the meaning of life, and there is a natural price to pay for pushing the envelope.
January 7th, 2009 at 01:34:40 FWIW, some people want to be two opposite things at the same time. They want to reject "oppressive" social norms by acting out, and they want to receive widespread approval for every "loook at meeee" moment required by them. Seriously though, how anyone who, say, has lost control of their limbs, could put up with this whole clip, is completely beyond me. Okay, so maybe the freedom's mostly in how we can run away from nature's pursuit.
January 7th, 2009 at 01:57:39 GOD is sovereign and without HIS permission, nothing can occur.
January 7th, 2009 at 02:20:38 why do you decide which neurons to fire? because of the choice you most want to make right? and that's based on the information you take in through your senses from the outside world which is all governed by the physical laws. it's not atcually you deciding to fire the neurons, but rather them firing in reaction to light that comes in through your eyes or sound from your ears or pressure from your skin. it's all connected and all determined.
January 7th, 2009 at 02:43:37 The idea of the absence of free will might be the most threatening idea of the 21st century. Why? Because free will is often as an excuse for roles of people in our society. So what happens if people begin to question free will? They will question their decisions and their whole fate. And they will also question our society, which still can be pretty well described by the laws of the animal kingdom. Also the western economy might be threatened because it is based on will control by advertising.
January 7th, 2009 at 03:06:36 How about abstract expressionism? All sorts of freedom. Camoflaging themes and strategies, branching off from new ideas. Jazz.
January 7th, 2009 at 03:29:35 you decide what neurons to fire in your brain. they works thorugh natural laws but their activity isn't determined by it. you decide to reach out, not the passive laws of physics
January 7th, 2009 at 03:52:34 it's like talking to your philosophy professor after eating some shrooms
January 7th, 2009 at 04:15:33 The laws of karma say we are free only around 3% of our action, the rest has been already predetermined..
January 7th, 2009 at 04:38:32 ya but because of all the influences upon you, you make a "choice" based on the idea of what you think is best, which is all that has been imprinted on you. You wouldnt know what is best if you did not have a memory of what is best or the instinct to know what is best. thus your body naturally reacts with the help of these physical laws that hes talking about, to help you decide with the help of memories or instict what choice you should and will most likely make.
January 7th, 2009 at 05:01:31 Heh. Jail-house philosophy. How to prepare for a jailhouse where no one can bluff in poker for s***.
January 7th, 2009 at 05:24:30 Hmm. This would require a definition of freedom. Lets go with "Without Restriction" so if I was free to make choices I am not restricted on what choice to make yet my desire is to follow the better of the many choices. I am not ristricted to one choice, I have every possible choice in the world to make! Yet of all the possibilities and all influences upon me I will naturally pick what is best. I use my freedom to naturally choose what I determined was best. Am I right in this?
January 7th, 2009 at 05:47:29 The brain can accumulate potential for unpredictability in selections and then freely collapse into an arbitrary choice. Experiments asking people to artificially pick arbitrary sides and register the choice at a time that is the convenience of the chooser do not reflect this one bit. Effort is minimized, and one perhaps imagines how the subject came to "volunteer."
January 7th, 2009 at 06:10:28 "The brain is the enabler of free will, and thus your free will is limited by what your brain limits it to." There's also the body and the rest of the world throwing up limits. That's why I focus on cheeseburgers sometimes I guess.
January 7th, 2009 at 06:33:27 Very well said. It is very sad to see how dumbed we have become. Dogma-infested education, shallow-composed, sex-driven newpieces, superficial non-existing intellectuality or even the slightest depth of though in MOST movies and everyday readings. One must question what's going on! Why are we being treated like doers, button-pushers, or Delta Working Class in an increasingly Brave New World.
January 7th, 2009 at 06:56:26 Sigh. This stuff fucks me up. I can't go throughout my day thinking about these things... I either have to just live and not analyze anything or dig deep in my head and isolate myself...it's like there's no moderation.
January 7th, 2009 at 07:19:25 Of course it doesn't make free will magically possible. I never said anything of the kind. Everything in the universe is subject to the physical laws. However, free will, as in experience, thought and consciousness is limited by the brain because it is the only framework for it to operate within. The obvious fact that the brain is limited by the physical and chemical laws doesn't change this at all. Quantum physics, unless discovered related to neurology, won't help us understand free will.
January 7th, 2009 at 07:42:24 How can one appear to be unpredictable (a useful quality in some pursuits) without free choices?