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I gotta say, I might be coming around, nobody with free will would choose to purchase and wear those glasses.

Other than that, this interview seemed odd. A good part of it is spent asking him generic so where did you grow up, what was your favorite food as a kid questions. I understand that his life experiences can be relevant to shaping his views, but it's all so mundane, including his answers. There's a few paragraphs in the middle actually discussing his viewpoints, and that's it. Then back to bullshit questions. Maybe that's what they were going for, and I'm the problem, expecting it to be focused on his viewpoints.

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those glasses, wtf.. gotta watch your nose around that guy

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I wanted to watch this, but I just couldn't.

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Well, it's a written interview that you have to read, so watching it would be understandably difficult to do.

Watch? That’d would’ve been nice to listen or watch but it was a written interview lol. One click and dipped I see

lol this day has been a bit rough but this exchange cracked me up!

Glad to hear it :)

I'd say you're welcome, but can't really take any credit.

I tried to watch a book once, but it didn't do anything for me.

Can't tell if this is a hilarious joke about free will or a random benign comment

I think one of the reasons why people come to different conclusions on this issue is that some are only concerned with the pure question of free will, while others focus on the implications of that question.

Do we have free will? No. We like to think that we are making decisions based on preferences, but in reality what we prefer has been shaped by our genetics and environment/life experiences (both of which incorporate random chance as well). It was said well by Schopenhauer - "Man can do what he wills but he cannot will what he wills."

Here's the problem - this lack of free will implies none of us have true moral responsibility for our actions, as mentioned in the interview, and operating according to this assumption is detrimental to both individuals and society. Individuals can and will use this belief to justify their baser instincts, there are serious moral dilemmas with punishing criminals, etc. And most people are aware, at least subconsciously, of these inherent issues, which causes them to reject the idea of free will, on top of the fact that not having control over one's life is troubling for most people.

So in short, we do not have free will but should endeavor to live life as if we do.

>So in short, we do not have free will but should endeavor to live life as if we do.

But if we don't have free will, and if Schopenhauer is correct in that we cannot will what we will, then how would one endeavor to live life as if he has free will?

>Here's the problem - this lack of free will implies none of us have true moral responsibility for our actions, as mentioned in the interview, and operating according to this assumption is detrimental to both individuals and society.

It is not wholly detrimental. It grants us the liberating power to forgive anyone, for anything. Why hate anyone for their actions, when they are just an automaton, like I am? And you do not need hatred to take pragmatic actions, to protect yourself from bad people.

There already are serious moral dilemmas with punishing criminals. Meaning that lack of free will is just another reason to not punish them.

We always should have been jailing, rehabilitating, or otherwise handling criminals solely for the protection of others. That belief is not in conflict with lack of free will's moral implications.

>We like to think that we are making decisions based on preferences,
>
>but in reality what we prefer has been shaped by our genetics and environment/life experiences

Why are you treating those two things as different?

​

>this lack of free will implies none of us have true moral responsibility for our actions

Well, apart from the idea of 'true moral responsibility' being treated as if it exists like some kind of physics, where does such an implication come from?

I'm not sure how things can be 'factors beyond our control' and also there be any 'our'. If as an organism it's all 'factors beyond control' all the way down then there is no 'our' or 'I'. The view seems to keep personal identity as an individual ("I'm me!") but abandon responsibility as an individual ("I didn't do it, the factors did it!").

Wouldn't that be like endeavoring to live your life like you have supernatural powers?

Not saying a person can't, but that'd be the decision.

I'm not sure why you'd keep referring to someone as 'they' or acknowledge their reference to 'I' if you forgive them for anything. If the thing seen is just a puppet, you can forgive what occurred but would you go and refer to the puppet as it's own entity that is worthy of 'they' or using 'I'? Would seem odd.

I, too, am a puppet, using the language of puppets, referring to other puppets as they wish to be referred to, because otherwise they would be hurt.

Besides that, I don't really understand what you're saying.

You can't choose to do anything if there's no free will. Thus, one could not choose to endeavor to live as if free will existed.

Doesn't mean it wont happen, though.

To be fair - that is kind of the point of the site, most of the interviews are like that. It’s ‘What Is It Like To Be a Philosopher’, not ‘What do Philosophers Think’.

Just seems to pass the buck on the inconsistency - how can puppets be hurt? And who/what at the strings has decided they ought not to be?

I really don't think the whole puppet idea and also using 'I' are at all consistent with each other. It's like pretending to be puppeteer AND puppet, whichever is most convenient at any given moment.

> Just seems to pass the buck on the inconsistency - how can puppets be hurt?

I don't really see how the question is coherently connected with the topic. Even just granting a fully deterministic world, why do you think that somehow contains an implication that an individual could not be hurt? You could say they were determined to be hurt, but how would it make sense to say they cannot be hurt? Causation and "ability to feel" are not remotely the same question.

Well if there's no free will then we can't help but choose to punish criminals. And since they have no free will but continue to be anti-social, then we have no choice but to lock them up or execute them.

See the kind of problems you get into when you discuss free will on this shallow basis?

If we approached setting up our societies in a scientific manner as complex systems that require tuning for specific goals then it would be no issue at all. Framing societal design in a moral framework has always been one of the main issues preventing humanity from progressing toward a better future.

Doesn't mean what won't happen?

Carrot vs stick. Punishment can act as a deterrent to some (many!). If I know police are running radar on the highway ahead, I slow down to avoid them punishing me with a ticket or permanent mark on my driving record.

If I think no one else is watching and I won’t hurt anyone else, I don’t stop at stop signs, because I don’t foresee the punishment (though this may ultimately be foolish of me).

I don’t go around physically fighting people I don’t like or people who antagonize me. I have been trained in society to know this is wrong. My moral compass does not want to hurt other people for perceived slights; rather I’d only fight to defend against grave and imminent danger. I also fear the repercussion of escalated violence, such as a knife or gun being pulled, which is an instant form of personal punishment. I fear hurting someone else so badly I kill them or permanently damage them. I fear their harm, and I fear my own punishment.

I do not want to go to jail and be separate from society. I want to conform to the good parts of society happy to discuss further, but I think punishment has its validity.

What problem? What shallowness? You have described reality. The criminal's fate was to do harm and be harmed. They are helpless. They are to be both pitied and guarded against, but not hated. Not punished further for the poor hand they were dealt.

I'd say punishment, as I meant it, arises from a combination of intent and results.

Speeding tickets? Are intended to keep roadways safer, and are effective at deterring speeding. Not a punishment.

Now look at the death penalty. It's not really deterring people from murder more than a life sentence. In America, it's wasteful. Based on those two points and the death penalty's continued usage, I can infer that there is vindictive intent propping it up. That is a punishment.

Every sub atomic particle interaction since the Big Bang has predetermined that not only would someone design those glasses, but someone would buy it and wear it just to tell you he had no say in the matter, it wad preordained by the forces of the universe.

Well I guess moping around feeling powerless about not being in control of your life or decisions is ultimately something you do not have a say in. I am just glad my non free will is set up in a way that I can still “make” choices.

Free will or not. I still think we should punish people who do bad things. Also the very concept of “now we can forgive those who do bad things” seems like a decision to me.

I personally am 50/50 on whether free will is real or not. Since QM means there is no determinism in the universe there is a possibility that conscious beings could have some influence over the probabilities. Not saying that is the case but it’s not 100% case closed on free will. If the universe was completely deterministic then yes, but the universe is inherently random

Exactly how we did up until now. When I was young I was much obsessed with the questions around free will, but then I came to ask myself "ok then?". Why should I care if I have "free will" or not? It's not like I can let go of myself, and suiciding is pretty idiotic as an answer. Furthermore, as a society we surely cannot leave murderers or thieves around after giving a negative answer to the question of free will. We should still build our society (as we've always done) incentivizing certain behaviours and unincentivizing certain others. So, in the end, I decided this was the most pointless question that philosophy ever engaged with.

Yes because personal identity is a subjective reality. We have a sense of ourselves as bounded, relatively continuous & coherent over time and in space in the experiencing, self-aware self. But there’s no doubt that intrinsic and extrinsic factors shape and move us, from your microbiome or thyroid to language and cultural ideologies.

But we can't help but punish him. It's our fate, right?

Ok, I should clarify that I mean punishment in a vindictive manner. I see it as separate from results-based methods of handling criminals. We should lock someone up until we think they're not going to hurt anyone again, and no longer. As opposed to locking someone up forever because they hurt someone in the past, or executing them for it. Pragmatism or punishment is a matter of intent.

Because it's all irrelevant, because you have zero control over any of it. So who cares if they are hurt or not hurt. How can you even argue whether people should be punished or not? They either will be or they won't be. There is no choice here, everything is just happening, and it will happen however it was going to happen. At least that would be the case if there was no free will.

IMO you're not really saying what you're committed to. Saying 'We have a sense...', doesn't say what you're committed to yourself and any contradiction that might be pointed out with such a commitment.

That feels absurdist

This seems totally incoherent. What are you trying to say here?

I could tell, but I'll have to merely observe whether I do. 😉

I'm very new to all of this but if your only choices are confined to the cultures and rules around you, do you have free will? It's more like having privileges inside lines you cannot go outside of.

I probably sound dumb.

>we do not have free will but should endeavor to live life as if we do.

You could also say: We might not have free will, but having a will is enough to live your life.

>Why hate anyone for their actions, when they are just an automaton, like I am?

You might not have free will. But the fact that you have a will, can be enough to make you responsible for your actions.

> It is not wholly detrimental. It grants us the liberating power to forgive anyone, for anything. Why hate anyone for their actions, when they are just an automaton, like I am? And you do not need hatred to take pragmatic actions, to protect yourself from bad people.

A rifle is way closer to an automaton, and I hated having to hold and use one. Automaton can be badly automated.

>Exactly how we did up until now.

I think this is right. Because regardless of free will existing, consequences do exist.

So regardless of taking an action with free will existing or not in the back of your mind, the consequence will be the same and therefore there is no difference.

>Here's the problem - this lack of free will implies none of us have true moral responsibility for our actions

This is true but you can connect consequences to certain actions regardless of being a free will agent or not.

>and operating according to this assumption is detrimental to both individuals and society.

And therefore this is also false because there are consequences to actions regardless of free will. In nature as well as the man made world.

And this is essentially what we have done with our laws. None of us have true moral responsibility for our actions, but we hold people responsible nonetheless, because the alternative would be worse. Most people just don't realize this.

Where this gets more complicated is if I created a self-conscious killer AI. Does he deserve the consequences for his killings or do I? And if we loop back to what I explained above we get into a problem, because the only difference between a killer AI & a human murderer is that in the second example I engineered this robot and the person was engineered by 'circumstances'. Of course, so was the engineer of the AI...

>then how would one endeavor to live life as if he has free will?

You can't.

The more interesting question is, how does it look like to endeavor to live life as if you have free will? And the answer is going to be different from person to person, so the question you asked is completely hopeless ;)

>Punishment can act as a deterrent to some

Yes, and notably this neither implies nor requires free will. Even punishment for the sake of revenge can be valid* without free will. Fear and catharsis are just biological responses to stimuli... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

* I do not advocate for this, but it is a consideration

Except quantum mechanics only predict probabilities and sub atomic processes are - with regard to these probabilities - truly random, so I'm not sure what you mean.

If that was true, I suppose I would agree with you, but there's nothing stopping a person from leaving their life behind and starting a new life in another country, or going off grid and disappearing. If someone does that, do we then just say that he was predestined to do that?

We don’t understand QM well enough to know if they’re “truly” random. They appear random, but that doesn’t mean they are random.

Sure. Why not? This is like saying people choose who they’re attracted to or choose what they believe. Sure, one could speculate about them deciding to be attracted to things they aren’t or believe things they don’t. The reality is that we really don’t actually control either of these things.

When you get down to it, we don’t really control anything. We may soon discover that what we call consciousness is just the communication between our multiple brains. That is, our consciousness is an observer of the brain’s decisions, rather than the controller. In other words, what we consider “self” could just be along for the ride. Purely output from the brain.

That is true, however you could say that about any scientific theory. As long as there is no sign of it not being true and the theory withstanding every known test, it might as well be true. The philosophical standpoint could be that we never know the truth but only get better models, which fit our observations, and I would agree, but I don‘t see how that is helping anyone and what to learn from it.

Maybe I‘m just not made to discuss with your philosophical standpoints, being heavily biased with a masters degree in particle physics. This is my first time reading some comments in this sub and actually commenting, so I‘d love to hear what you think and why. :)

Indeed this is a great point - my last sentence was poorly worded. A better way to phrase it might be that the whole free will debate, while philosophically interesting, is ultimately moot from a practical perspective, and we should all just pretend we have free will?

Right, first of all your position isn't that your view is a possibility, it's that it's a fact. You aren't approaching it from a point of debate, there is no room for "I disagree" so there is effectively no point in engaging you.

That said, your take on it seems to be even more extreme than the interviewee, which runs up against the same problems. The interviewee himself acknowledges the problems inherent in the view. If we assume there is no free will, then no one is responsible for their actions, so there is no point punishing someone for any action or taking measures to prevent it. Guy shoots up an elementary school, tough shit, nothing we could do about it, he was always going to do that. Likewise, there is no point in praising great actions. A man invents a new method for clean, cheap energy and gives it away for the good of the planet instead of for profit. Who gives a fuck, he was already going to do that.

In addition to that being one of the most boring and passive "I'm just here waiting to die" takes on life, taken to the extreme it goes from an unimaginative, milquetoast viewpoint to detrimental to society as a whole. It's also no different than believing a higher power (God) controls all actions and outcomes regardless of human input, everything will always go according to His Plan, a belief that many philosophical individuals would consider small minded and naive.

The Cartesian self aware self is self evidently unified in time and place, the experiencing self

What does "predetermined" mean in this context? It sounds like you're positing hidden variable theories, but those have been categorically debunked thoroughly enough to earn a Nobel prize.

Oh I know. Was both poking fun at the glasses and the deterministic view most people who argue against free will hold (and yes I am aware free will could be an illusion in a probabilistic universe as well)

I was being sarcastic both with the glasses joke and the deterministic worldview of the glasses man.

It’s good that we live in a probabilistic universe, id hate to live in a universe where your fate is sealed before it even happens

Sometimes I like to reply seriously to a post that's obviously a joke.

Saying it is truly random has a higher burden of proof than saying it appears random. Sure, it may truly be random, but currently we just don’t know enough to say one way or another. If it really is random, it’ll be our first discovery of a truly random event.

What do you mean by “responsible for their actions?” If a machine is faulty, we don’t absolve it of blame for creating sub-optimal output conditions. If a person murders someone else, the murder still happened and they still committed it. We would still react deterministically to this event, whether by demanding capital punish enemy, imprisonment, or rehabilitation. You then can look at the conditions this murderer emerged in and see if patterns emerge. If mitigating those environmental conditions reduces the occurrences of murder, then what other conclusion could you draw?

That doesn’t even go into the myriad of data that decision making processes occur prior to conscious recognition of the decision. That is, fMRI data highly indicates that the “sub-conscious” structures of our brain make decisions and then what we call our “consciousness” is informed about it.

Then you have the fact that chemical and physical alterations to our brain structure cause behavioral and psychological changes to a person. For instance, chemical hemisphere separation creates two personalities with two narratives. If a blinder is used, and the one hand gives the other hand something, when prompted the person will make up a story about how they received it. Without separation, the person says they handed it to themselves.

Once you look at things beyond individual decisions, it becomes pretty clear that there’s nothing special about the human brain that could possibly separate it from natural determinism. There’s no “soul” to override our physical brains.

Hate it or not, that’s very likely the case. If QM events turn out to actually be random, it’ll be the first truly random event we’ve ever observed.

I see what you mean, in general, but that would lead us to basically not being able to say anything is something, wouldn't it?

Not really. We just don’t have enough data to conclusively make a claim like that. Especially since historically when claims of true randomness have been made, they’ve turned out to not be the case. It would be interesting if it turned out to actually be the case, though. Once we actually start relying on it functionally, we’ll know for certain if it’s really the case.

I do not know. It was really late and I was reading all sorts of comments here and I just kind of had a "Moment."

I believe that every choice we're able to make exist in the confines of what we're allowed to do. We step out of that line, society may praise or revile us. Our choices, unless we're completely alone, are always subject to scrutiny or praise based on constructs designed by the human imagination!

While it may seem like we can choose to do anything we want to, everything we could possibly think of is already paved by what is and isn't already acceptable.

I feel like i'm treading a fine line though and I may sound like I'm saying, "We don't have free will because I can't rob walmart without getting into trouble."

I'm not... although I would get how it sounds like that. It's an interesting subject and I'm not sure I'm convince of either outcome. I thank you for entertaining my thought though.

I think the question of "importance" is one thing, and there's certainly differing opinions there, but the person I was replying to seemed to be making a much more particular claim that under determinism people cannot be hurt, which seems far stranger.

Your point is understandable enough that if they're hurt they were determined to be and so it could not be otherwise so maybe worrying about it is a waste of time, but while that's all very relevant to the free will debate, I'm still just hung up on claiming that "hurt" isn't possible outside of any of that.

Wait so you’re saying that there is almost certainly hidden variables? Because every experiment so far has failed to reveal any hidden variables and it really does appear that particular states really do randomly fall within a probability distribution. So yes the past and state of the universe does limit the possible future states but only within the probability distribution.

Me too. Especially if the point is worth discussing.

>so far

Just to be clear, there are experiments that show that quantum entanglement is not the result of a hidden variable. See this video for how those experiments work.

So there is evidence against hidden variables. And you are essentially arguing that this evidence is wrong or misinterpreted. The only deterministic interpretation of this is that entangled particles have faster than light communication, which as far as I know, does not have evidence supporting it.

>Veritasium

lol. Okay.

It's just an explanation of the experiment, it's not like it was his research. Do you have an actual criticism of the experiment or my interpretation of it?

>It's just an explanation of the experiment

In my experience, Veritasium loses accuracy in his effort toward simplicity. I watched the video and learned nothing new and rolled my eyes on a few parts. That's why I prefer just reading the paper.

If you're genuinely interested in the paper, here it is with confounding factors included.

>Strictly speaking, no Bell experiment can exclude all conceivable local-realist theories, because it is fundamentally impossible to prove when and where free random input bits and output values came into existence13. Even so, our loophole-free Bell test opens the possibility to progressively bound such less-conventional theories: by increasing the distance between A and B (for example, to test theories with increased speed of physical influence); by using different random input bit generators (to test theories with specific free-will agents, for example, humans); or by repositioning the random input bit generators (to test theories where the inputs are already determined earlier, sometimes referred to as ‘freedom-of-choice’9). In fact, our experiment already enables tests of all models that predict that the random inputs are determined a maximum of 690 ns before we record them (Supplementary Information).

That paper's finding still appears to confirm the original Bell experiment though. So that's still evidence against that position.

There's always the potential for other models, but you argue as you expect further research to overturn these interpretations.

New models will inevitably come up, but that doesn't mean they will be deterministic. A deterministic model has a higher burden of evidence because it would still have to explain these experiments.

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>New models will inevitably come up, but that doesn't mean they will be deterministic.

You asked for the confounding factors of the experiment and I provided them from the paper authors themselves. I don't see any point in discussing this further. See ya.

I want to take a step back and hear your definition of punishment (of “law breakers”); I apologize if I misinterpreted.

Do you more so mean punishment as far as “society getting revenge on an individual for a bad act they committed”? Because I believe that concept is definitely worse than the rehabilitative approach. I know this sort of contradicts my previous post, but I understand that positive reinforcement is more effective than negative reinforcement, so punishment should be more of a last resort, and reward should be a more helpful frame to work off of.

I do not agree with the death penalty in many cases; I’d say I’m 30-70 in favor of it (or 7/10 disfavor). Once I heard the argument that a death sentence should only be given in a situation proven “beyond the shadow of a doubt”, which is nearly impossible to achieve (some say fully impossible because minute doubt can always exist), then I was swayed to disfavor the death penalty all around.

Still, I have to wonder if there are certain cases where we might feel obligated to go further than a life sentence, such as when [warning, they will be harsh] a rapist would receive a life sentence, but if they killed their victim, they would receive the death penalty.

I’d say I am a rational actor and a reasonable person, so my motives for not hurting others, stealing, killing, etc come from a personal moral compass of “doing the right thing” or “do unto others as you’d have done to yourself”. Even so, I know there are some absolute animalistic people who just do not think that same way, and are entirely out for their own benefit, fuck everyone else. They would just as easily hurt you severely as I might run a stop sign, EXCEPT for the thought of their own self preservation: a person who is “sane” but violent will not act with extreme violence toward somebody they perceive as a massive threat to their existence (in a way this is a very instinctual level of “respect” toward the superior force, where they know they would be vested and do not act with violence unless they think they can get away with it).

Aha, there it is in my mind: getting away with it. The lack of perception of punishment! That’s my definition: punishment is the imposition of something unpleasant or unwanted as a result of someone’s actions. A speeding ticket is a monetary punishment. A jail sentence is a punishment restricting your freedom. Solitary confinement punishes further (not sure if it’s ethical!) Would love to discuss more.

From the perspective of the punished, it may be unpleasant, unwanted. But as a society, we should never take action against someone with the aim of inflicting those feelings. They may be a side effect of whatever method is required, but never should it be the goal to do more harm. Even if someone thinks it is deserved.

Because it is never deserved. Because we're all here unwillingly. Because under determinism, even the worst murderers and tyrants didn't choose to be pitiful, terrible creatures that will never know our happiness. In a sense, they are the lowest of us, and even if all we're capable of giving them is pity, then we should still give.

How can intent exist without free will?

This is going to get brutal, but I believe that if a person’s entire existence on earth harms other people, then the world would be better off without that person existing (i.e. life imprisonment or death).

In my opinion, a tyrant should be assassinated if they perpetrate crimes against humanity, crimes against their own people, and show no ability to ever step back from such horrific acts. It would have been wonderful if someone could have killed Hitler earlier on in his mad run of power.

This then gets to the utilitarian realm of discussion: does the well-being of many outweigh the death of one? If some world leader was about to launch a nuclear weapon, I would be happy to hear their life was immediately put to an end. I would “celebrate” that day for the rest of my life, and teach my kids about the moment.

At some point, we get to this notion of self defense. The individual has the right to self defense, and society has the right to “self defense”, essentially now through the justice systems of the world.

What I wonder is, what is the net value to society when people believe they "got revenge" on a criminal / "they got what they deserved" / some notion of "we are happy the wrongdoers are suffering"

I truly wonder myself if that type of thinking promotes a safer society with less harmful criminal acts. Of course we MUST balance this with the sense of rehabilitation and reduction in recidivism.

Personally I believe the justice system should strive to fully rehabilitate and integrate offenders into society whenever possible, but still punish those who committed atrocious acts like rape, murder, violent robbery or home invasion.