Bottom line is : there is no random event ( if you think there is, try to name one ) - there is no reaction without previous action. So, when you do something ( with your "free" will) that action is basically a reaction and is determined by many factors and previous actions. When something is free it means it is detached from anything else and other things can not affect it .

Thank you for posting this! I'm a huge fan of Schopenhauer's Essay on Free Will.

This is a good I tro to the 3 sides. I was hoping for more in depth discussion.

One new idea I have is to combine Stephen Wolfram's idea of computational irreducibility which means that the future cannot be predicted even for many simple systems, with the idea of strong emergence. So that free will is deterministic yet not in the mechanical sense of Laplace but rather as a part of the universe developing into the future, of which our sense of free will is a necessary part.

For me to accept I have no free will, I must first resolve a question posed by Groucho Marx, “Who you gonna believe me, or your own eyes?”

Just because we are part of the environment doesn't mean the environment determines what we will do. Just because we are a whole made up of many smaller parts doesn't mean those smaller parts determine what we do. At our level of organization, made up of the intricate parts we have, as part of the intricate environment in which we live, we possess the ability to remember the past and anticipate the future and consider options and ponder their consequences and make real time choices accordingly. We, at the intersection of potent parts and wholes, are the even more potent decision makers and doers. Thus we have free will.

Not sure why this was recommended since I haven't watched y'all's videos in a hot minute, but as usual, I'm gonna keep editing my comment to take notes and give opinions, which I really don't expect anyone else to read. I like the free will question but I personally think that at the end of the day, it's not a yes or no thing. Like, "does water taste blue?" You could try to answer that for hours but more as an exercise in reasoning (color theory, how media impacts taste, different types of water, lighting, how we perceive color as representing blah blah blah) than because you can get to a definitive answer. Bc everything a person is is at least initially influenced by things out of their control, starting with birth and only getting more anxiety-inducing from there. 😂 Any choice we make isn't necessarily predetermined by something or someone else, but it's determined by [x amount of things outside of ourselves] and [x amount of things internal or otherwise personal to us, how we reason things out, emotions etc]. The choices we make are within this framework of a world that we did not ourselves create, and that's why moral reasoning is so messy and cool and weird - because morality can't exist in a vacuum. The falling man can't be moral or immoral because he can't affect anyone but himself, and he has no point of reference to consider himself an individual with choice at all, does he? Anyway, that's probably off topic. Either our choices are influenced by nothing but ourselves, making them random and disconnected from everything and everyone, and therefore have no moral quality - or they're influenced by outside forces, in which case they can be examined and questioned and criticized and changed. Basically I think of free will as an apparent force - we talk about it as a convenient way to refer to the phenomenon of reasoning and choice, because who wants to give that disclaimer every time we mention a choice every single day? And if we don't have that mental shortcut, if we have to keep defining free will constantly, it's just going to impede any deeper questions into who makes choices and why - or who doesn't and why. But idk, as a kid I was raised Christian and so I did get some of the basics of calvinist predestination as food for thought. Again, it's complicated and neat to think about, but the end result isn't something we can change, so it's not a practical question; it's just, well, philosophical lol. I will say, I don't personally buy into multiuniverse theory, or at least the pop culture one of every choice making a branching timeline. The dice rolls a certain way because of gravity and wind and the table surface. We make certain choices for a million complex reasons. But that has been unexpectedly comforting to me when I'm trying to accept that I don't have power to change the past or to just make the universe fit my needs. I can tell myself, "In no reality would I have ever done [x]" or "If [y] happens, it will always have been going to happen, and it will always have happened." That sounds like it's devaluing my own choices, but it's not - I still do my best. Instead it makes things feel a little more solid - reminding myself that I'm dealing with an external reality that isn't swayed by me feeling guilty about what I should have done or wishing hard enough for something to happen soon. I feel like that gives my choices more meaning, y'know? That they are actions with permanent consequences. It feels much weirder to think that every time I choose not to hold my breath, that my act of breathing is creating an entire new universe. Man, maybe I don't even need to watch videos. Maybe I just need to journal and feel ever-so-smart. Edit - I'm struck at the intro and how it uses "we." It's not necessarily wrong, but who "we" are seems important - this is talked about as a universal problem but these seem to be very narrowly defined by a certain cultural understanding of the world

The world ( that means the universe) is a stochastic system and life is a brownian movement. And despite the fact some basic laws seem to be applying across space and time to all physical objects ( that includes living objects...with life having been described by some as a contradiction to the universal entropy principle...if analyzed separarately from the system that contains it) , like any other concept, free ( will ) needs to be analyzed as related to its metacontext.

There may be a source for deterministic 'intelligence'. BWM¹ If Physics is headed roughly in the right direction we can extrapolate (between the lines) that all that exists is Space (infinite, neutral, a vacuum) and it is populated with Energy (electro-magnetic, perpetual motion, tireless/eternal and bipolar (pos/neg)). From a design perspective such an extremely robust base material augers well for the compounded constructs of this energy (atomic materials, diverse atoms, isotypes thereof, mass, matter, planets, stars, Gravity, etc.) The bipolar aspect of Energy induces an implicit *binary Logic* which like the creation of matter it too can compound into 'useful' materials and ultimately (to this point) render human life. Time, of course, is merely experiencing the non-static nature of the Cosmos. The biggest clue is Entropy, where previously stable connection disassembles itself when some critical component stops functioning and the whole is 'dis-rendered'. Ergo: The human design challenge: To try to answer the cute (to me) anthropomorphic question, _Are Intelligence and Imagination the Cosmos trying to make sense of itself?_ Of course that is untrue, but mankind needs some idea that the game is infinite, poor thing. Hence Free Will is the solitary search for self-improvement/empowerment/discovery despite the gainsayers. ¹ bear with my (lunatic mind)

Circa 3:00: if one had 'really good reasons' to A, as supposed, the reflective question posed comes down to: 'Could you have done something unreasonable, viz., not-A?' If that sort of leeway is a necessary condition of free will, Scotistic voluntarism is true. The will cannot be free unless it is subject to no authority, not even Reason. But why would anyone want to be free from Reason? Why would one consider freedom a matter of being able to violate one's own nature- Rationality? Freedom is being unhindered by Violence and Ignorance, so as to be able to deliberatively realize Happiness. RFGA, Ph.D.

The word ”free” in ”free will” doesn’t add much. ”Free” from what? Your genes? Your upbringing, memories and all your experiences? Your friends, your dog and your wife? What do you want to be free from? If you were free from all of these you would just be a mad dog running around without direction. If that is ”free will” I don’t want it.

The universe is magical. Not because magic is real, but because it is not.

Hard to follow with such heavy presence of filler words, but I'll take it. Imo, I wish the speaker had a few practice sessions before giving his talk, to make him more confident. If you've been binging on other YT philosophy channels and jump to here, the difference in quality is night and day.

Option A) we get free will so we responsible for all = look at your life= not good. Option B) we don't get free will so we can not change a thing =look at your life= not good. Option C) who cares ? Do you really need looking for something which doesn't exist but in your mind. Life's too short.

It’s turtles all the way down..

To me (an uneducated troglodyte) it seems like splitting hairs. Either we are a part of *god and must do what WE will or.. we are a subsystem in an ever-elaborating program that will play out across time to an indeterminate end. But either way the outcome will be the same. Does that make sense? I’m trying to sound smart 😄

Someone should advise this guy that it isn't necessary to fill pauses between words by saying UHHHH

Nothing learnt, just a game of picking sides.

Um,

Everything is cause and effect. That doesn't mean we don't have free will. Our free will determines our nuances, and the 'devil is in the details'. Accurate philosophy is simply impossible because whatever 'the truth' is, is circular, recursive, and impossible to understand. While I do agree that I started using heroin in 2001 simply because it was illegal (cause and effect), I still made the choice to do so. We simple haven't been educated properly about the nature of duality, and the unity of opposites.

"Uh" "oh" "um" "uhm"... out.

Too many 'erms. Not a good speaker.

you guys are chasing ghosts! this dilemma is fake! so many are milking it…a shame.