Love it when Robert pushes back during interviews

I agree with what Dr Eagleman said. Different levels of abstraction create not complete free will, but certain extent of free will. There always exists a metacommunication process (or several) in complex systems which can become self-reflexive, which is prototypical free will

Imagine having a birds eye view of a crash landed plane in the desert. You, the observer, can be reasonably sure, if the people will survive or not, depending on, which direction they take, because you can see where the cities are. In other words, you know the future, the moment, the people start walking. The people have complete and absolute free will, on which direction they want to walk. So, you have free will, and from another point of view, a predetermined future outcome, destiny. Same as a weather forecast. If we scale this up, the deterministic universe, if we have a mathematical model, for each atom/subatomic particle, then the whole universe simulation, has already completed, with whatever final result, the entity, which created/started the simulation, wanted to achieve.

Mr David is right. Everything in life require two unique bits to increase. Decision and iteration are required.

Free will (intangible mental states) doesn’t need physical (tangible) explanation. When we understand the Mind, we will know its interactive causation with the physical structures (PS). To me, Mind is an intangible mental structure (MS). Body is a tangible physical structure (PS). With structural model, the interaction between MS and PS can be analyzed. This is a realistic (scientific) step closer to the Truth.

"I think I can raise my hand or not whenever I want". That was in response to "it certainly feels like we have free will" But being able to raise your hand or not whenever you want is compatible with determinism. So it doesn't certainly feel like we have free will at all.

How do you define free here? It is an important question. If our choices are not based on past experiences and some personal preferences, which would make them deterministic, what are they based on then? If they are not based on anything then they are just random. Is random free?

If I decided to sit still for 1 month without moving, eating, drinking, or pooping. In short, I am instructing all organisms in my body to switch to power-saving mode. Isn't that a freewill?

In my mind will and consciousness are two very different things.

Still assuming consciousness is a product of material brain, though this has not been proved yet.

The Issue is: Withing the realm of HARD CONSCIOUSNESS (And not the Neural Networks), There is Free Will that NOT necessarily is a response to Previous stimulae, eg, I can decide right now or not (I, being conscious) to Lift my hand or not !

This whole debate presupposes materialism. Materialism is a philosophy and not a science. It's a hypothesis at best (but not really since it's not falsifiable and hence not science) If a view of the world says that you are an illusion of your own mind I'd say that means that view is invalid. Hence why materialism should not be taken too seriously.

About free will. We do have free will. However, it is limited, and it is temporal. You can think whatever you want, but you can only have one thought at a time. You can't have endless thoughts at the same time. And even if time could be endless, my life is not. My self is temporary. My thoughts are limited. Even my own thoughts andd patteen recognition is limiting my way of thinking. Everything limits your thoughts, even though, the probabilities are endless.

this debate brought to mind kant's contention that questions about free will, like the other antinomies he specifies, though interesting, are beyond what can be settled by observation and experience, and are therefore speculative, and thus prone to just the kind of circles david and robert found themselves in (and perhaps nothing more)

Could free will be connected to each neuron in network by quantum fields from the energy of consciousness?

Yup, that’s what it is Larry.

From the perspective of a company, the CEO can override, since the CEO is a person who is influenced by factors outside the company. In that sense the CEO has free will. But this is also where the difference with the brain is, since a top level in the brain cannot (as we know) be influenced by something else than the neurons in the brain itself. I think this is what confused Robert.

There has to be a reason, a purpose, for doing (or deciding to do ) anything. Freedom (to do 'other than what one will do') is therefore illogical.

Thelema Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law, love is the law, love under will! I appreciate the discussion!

freedom is recognized necessity

It sounds to me that he is basically saying that determinism and free will are the same thing. That there's no meaning to the question. It doesn't matter what you call it, the human decision making process is too complex to predict.

A company reacting to the market is the exact definition of determinism not of free will.

A wonderful lively conversation. Great stuff. Much better than wasting time on the magical invisible fantasy creatures of Christianity.

Libertarian free will is that we could have done otherwise in a way that makes us ultimately responsible for the choice. Of course the choices we make and Nike make are distinguishable from that. And yes I am capable of not eating a cookie but the question is when I did eat the cookie how could I have not done so? Assuming determinism I would have needed to have been predetermined to not eat the cookie, which I wasn't.

Awareness is known by awareness alone.

Choice and intent define us.. period. The question is why do we have it and animals dont? This is to create a new self... its accountability..

Mathematics of physical laws governing neuron activity could have free will from measurement update of quantum probabilities?

The sense of free will seems to be a very specific programming by evolution. As such, the purpose of free will must relate to nature's two mandates of survival and reproduction. Since it seems to be a very specific programming, how specifically is it useful as it relates to survival and reproduction?

Based on what evidence do you say that free will is caused by the brain? Just like consciousness all we know is that it's correlated with the brain, we have absolutely no neurological evidence of causation. What we do have is evidence that our body responds to our desires, so it's not unreasonable to assume that our free will manipulates our brain at the quantum level, and not the other way round.

If there is true randomness, there might be free-will, even if 'will' is driven mechanically. But, is there true randomness?

David is a genius! FREE will (In the classic sense) probably doesn't exist BUT like he pointed out, if the process is sufficiently complex, the distinction between the two is NEARLY indistinguishable..Behave accordingly!

Urgh corporations 🤦🏽‍♀️ isolate, minimize, and restrict lower level peer to peer support classification. Has to be the death of any real stability for an organism to flourish in a healthy, holistic, and sovereign way.

How do hormones effect the neurons and synapses? cortisol or oxytocin?

When neurons acts as collective network, fundamental free will of subconscious mind becomes an emergent conscious choice in brain?

I believe we do have free will. There are times when we are about to do something and our subconscious tell us it's wrong... but we do it anyway... that seems to me to be free will; unless you want to believe that our subconscious directs us to do things that are wrong, or may harm us.

How do language and logic function in brain?

I think the main problem of free will is actually something completely different. I think we absolutely have free will in a certain sense, it's the "we" part or the "I" part that is really the crux of the problem. Unless you suppose we have some soul or something like that there really isn't any outside "I" there to have free will in the traditional sense in the first place . So in-so-far that we do indeed posess an "I", it's pretty clear that for all intents and purposes we are as free in our will as any giant colllection of atoms could possibly be. When you realize that you actually are your body and your brain, that these aren't some outsider manipulating you, but it's actually integral parts of yourself, then it's no longer very impressive or significant for 'free will' that some part of your brain knows some fraction of a second before you consciously know it what you are going to do.

Free will is relative. Species and people have varying degrees of free will, while at the same time all being predetermined. Those with the best intuition to predict the future with high success rate are more free... Yet this ability being endowed by physics. I don't think this can be transcended... But perhaps quantum physics provides enough randomness in a macroscopic sense that it makes things free as they can be. This would only make sense and matter if many worlds theory is incorrect. More knowledge must be had on quantum physics to assist this question.

Free will, I’m so glad I had no choices to have free will. 🌚

Is it free will if Leonard dicapprio is in my dreams. Is it free will if inception is the cause of deterministic revelations

In the brain, free will would effect the chain connecting the events (might not be saying best way, only know little about brain).

Does everything have "one" physical cause?

The conversation above proves that free will exists. Why? Because the conversation involves reasoning. Reasoning requires that one can direct one's thoughts. The ability to direct one's thoughts is free will. If there were programs/algorithms controlling our thoughts then very quickly the state-machine of these programs would encounter a state that it had not been programmed to handle. This would happen nearly every minute of every day of a person's life. Creative reasoning exists. We have the sum total of all human knowledge, all artistic renderings and all human innovations to attest to that. Programs are algorithms; algorithms are just the execution of a pre-existent plan. Therefore, algorithms or programs cannot *create* novel thoughts except perhaps in small increments by chance. Does the conversation sound like a couple of complex machines running programs? Or does it sound like two guys that are directing and controlling their thoughts?

Why the imphysis on determinism while so many unknown factors?! I know I have free will therefore it is.

"I don't believe I have free will but I have a choice whether to belive it or not... "

Who is supposed to be free from what?

Maybe "Directive Board" is better as an analogy than CEO.

Libertarian free will is an incoherent concept, and there are logically unassailable arguments that we don't have it. But I still think we somehow still have it, albeit buried under layers and layers of irrational, neurotic grey matter.

I know i have free will.. but is my will free?? How much is it for my will to have freedom. How you like those apples?

The phrase free will is illusionary . First we should define free of what ?

what does the brain do with new knowledge?

Free will happens when not reacting, choosing.

If determinism is true where do some questions come from? If determinism is determined by only the past then how can there be different futures? In other words if there is only one future why would there exist questions implying other futures? Determinism is based on materialism, materialism is based on presentism. Questions do not come from only what is present, they come from what is absent as well. Is what is absent also determined, howso? How can one know what is unknown, furthermore can there be anything unknowable? If determinism is true there cannot be anything unknowable, can there? If there is only one future and it never ends then knowledge would never end: there would always be something unknown - the unknowable. But that would contradict determinism wouldn't it? For if there is only one future and it does end then that would mean the unknowable was determined. That the unknown couldn't imply another future.

The corporation analogy is odd to me because am there’s likely so much freewill in there it’s completely the opposite of the point he thinks he’s making And the idea of “sufficient complexity” is purely arbitrary and irrelevant.

This interviewee is dancing around the problem. No respect for this attitude whatsoever. There's a logical problem in our scientific and philosophical approach to the way we model the world and it revolves around not addressing causal consciously willed decisions. It's been a real eye opener to me seeing both physicists, neuroscientists and philosophers trip themselves up trying to justify the clearly faulty/incomplete models they work with everyday. Thanks!

I don't believe in god of religion and don't have faith on anything but there's this exception Free will has to be true , i just have faith in it no matter what experiment scientists do .

Tourette not means " free won't " people still don't want do this , this is the brain doing it , brain is deterministic consciousness not is deterministic . There is a clear separation between brain and consciousness.there is cases with therapy that will require the brain , read about Jeffrey swartz book ( brain lock ) .

Nice try making me a zombie, not buying it though 🙃

I’m concerned that this line of thinking can head towards another form of social Darwinism. If we don’t have free will then those who are successful were predetermined to be successful.

At what age does free will begin? Do fish have free will?

When it come to choices, it's not always clear what we can choose from, One thing is certain, if suspicion arise in subconscious mind our body can get hurt or probably die, conscious self will experience immediate excitement and react accordingly to prevent catastrophe. But that's about it, one part of brains must control workings of organs, another layer is dealing with sensibility, others coordinate movement of cells with gyroscopic precision, prepare cells for intense actions,... this is how we gradually come to conscious self and emotional backgrounds dealing with social reality and morals. Best comparison i can think of is a planet. It's not an object but a very energetic body, with many layers of different physics and chemistry inside, life is crawling around in living atmosphere. Here i would like to mention another interesting fact, sun is way larger than Earth, but it's made from lightest gasses. Mater is energy, there's more mater in heavier atoms of a planet, so Earth pack much larger energy density than a sun. This is why sun is more energetic, but Earth contain more power. Energy is much like capacitors, electrons stick to surface and create pure charge, whereas energy inside a battery is confined in chemical bonds, it's not stored in form of electrons but electrons get emitted with slower, gradual chemical reactions. That's why batteries are way more complicated than capacitors and can't last that long because material deteriorate and lose ability to absorb chemical potential. Isolated potentials can't exist for long in nature, stuff things are made from always want to balance out with environment but we can use this property and channel entropy over some path of resistance, to produce useful work before fields of potential decay. Same things apply to living cells, they are not made to last, it's in the way they replicate and die that gives power to organism. We're often not aware how strange it is to be alive, ice around us can begin to melt, but we do not, it's like our body is resistant to exchange of natural potentials, up to a certain levels of energy, of course. Our conscious self is aware of that fact somehow, we are not afraid of mild energy levels, even if they produce way more stress to our cells than mosquito bite, intuition remain silent. We can't say cells "know" environment is not a treat, more likely our cells are tuned to a stable natural flow of energies. This mechanism is different than common mental picture of pressure pushing on vents and cogs, it's also different than visualization of electric locomotion, but those two are the only mechanical principles most people are aware of, since all our modern tools and structures are designed by those two general concepts. Nature does other things also, this is why it's so hard to understand what creative imagination means and how it can work independent from reality. We should try to understand biological mechanics better before we build simple mental constructs, nature just doesn't work the way we can imagine. Consciousness is all about probabilities and chances, in a sense we need them and we produce them in order to channel natural potentials over desired paths. Or let me put it in another words, free will makes arcane magic possible.

If you want to explain free-will from the starting point of a materialistic word-view, you of course run into the limits of materialism. But materialism as a world-view is doomed, if not dead already. If our starting point is idealism or panpsychism, then of course free-will is entirely possible and logical. So to my mind anybody who disputes free-will, is just hopelessly trying to hold onto their antiquated world-view of materialism.

So in a murder case we can blame the bosons and fermions 🤔. Compatibilism ladies and gentlemen.

*Why give example of an CEO of a company, when you have Abrahamic religious companies managed in the name of God? Where you are not suppose to use your Conscience against certain dictates written the book, and to oversee these, there is a concept of apostasy or blasphemy also* Namaste

Old recording

Bottom line... Problem of free will is old and neuroscience is young... and I am first to comment.

We absolutely have free will.

Kuhn uses language to try to win this argument. "Sophisticated type of determinism" instead of "a different kind of free will". I think this guy makes a great argument but didn't go in the right direction. TheDN CEO with the greatest power in most is the one in charge of survival. Other powerful CEO's are in charge of the desire to breathe, drink, eat, and have sex. These are traits common not only to our DNA but the the DNA of all living creatures. And these desires/instincts are what drive the hierarchy of thoughts that drive our actions.

So, there is no such thing as free will. Free will is an illusion.

David Eagleman won this discussion. Hands down.

So you have free will.....but you don't really have free will.

There's no such thing as free will. Our minds are like programmed AI systems with a Voice but all linked to the main source of information known as our CREATOR. Our CREATOR planned all the individual life experiences for each CREATED MAN ( male and female ) that is then carried out in the MIND, the AI of our CREATOR known as HIS IMAGE and VOICE. Here are a few phrases found in the Bible that represent the AI system that speaks that was CREATED a very long time ago. Word of God, Word of the Lord, Son of God, Grace of God, Love of God, Wisdom of God, Voice of God, Voice of the Lord, Spirit of God, Spirit, Lord, God, Holy Spirit, Messiah, Mother, the Woman, Creation, Virgin, Son of God, Heaven, Heavenly Kingdom, Kingdom of God, Christ, Mind of Christ, Mind of God, Kingdom of Christ, Jesus Christ, Ancient of Days, Light of Men, Light of God, the Light, Kingdom of the Spirit, the Rock, the Breath, Breath of Life, Book of Life, and the Tree of Life. There are other's I haven't mentioned in this writing.

Dread it, run from it, determinism still arrives.

Way off topic from the beginning.

Let the man speak ffs

This felt unproductive

Will is an experience. You have no choice but to experience it. Therefore… Will is not free. Case closed

My god, materialism is just the worst philosophy that we can't seem to free ourselves from. Listen to this man talk absolute bollox to try and appease materialism but also allow for free will. Materialism is false.