This House Believes Free Will Does Not Exist | Cambridge Union (…briefed…)
Hello, this time, despite my free-will limitations (you will see bellow why it might or might not be so…), I’ve chosen to present a thought and memories provocative panel, which I consider important. So here is the video-panel, which I’ve tried to brief in written and sometimes, even dared to comment…including vertical hyperlinked content (songs, videos, additional material)…
Dr.Hannah Critchlow…”we are increasingly finding that…our fates, our life-stories, our personalities, our beliefs, our complex behavioral traits, have hefty biological underpinning”…”and the more we learn about brain, the smaller the space for free will”…”and I’d like to open the discussion with that”…
-) My…humble comment here would be that, taking seriously the whole speech, I still believe that brain-plasticity and Epigenetics…have enough free(-will) possibilities to affect who you are…in almost whatever you inherited way… and/or even into pretty new for your ancestry and yourself (as you are) dimensions … With no intend to be offensive, I also want to add that I do NOT see tattoos (even on the forehead) or not medically required body-silicone…, as brain- or beauty plasticity…
Professor Daniel Dennett…”in my view the whole topic of free will has been misleading people for several millennia, because they confuse control with causation”…”the beautiful thing about human beings is that we are good self-controllers (for instance both a rolling ball and as skier down a hill are predetermined/framed in their possibility of movement, yet the skier has (some) free will options for control”…”(then) I think it was Kant who…talked about the ability to be moved by reasons”…”(so) presumably you came to the Cambridge Union tonight, expecting to be moved by reasons”…”that’s what free will fundamentally is — the capacity to adapt your behaviour to the reasons you (aim)”…”…free will is a talent, a skill…(via) which we could take responsibility of our actions…(also self-correctively )”…
-) Here also very humbly I would quote “the/a strict goal limits…..the ministry/devotion unfolds*****”
Professor Anil Seth…”what most people mean by free will is the feeling that the self has a causal role in making things happen in the world”…”when I experience freely willing in action I am experiencing myself as causing that action”…”the content of experiences like these, let’s call them experiences of volition, are philosophically disorienting in a really weird and pernicious way…perhaps more than any other kind of experience, experiences of volition fuel intuitions of dualism, that consciousness or at least conscious self-hood, is something apart from the material world, that nonetheless has causal impact on that material world…and this is the kind of free-will that I think does not exist”…(said otherwise dualist or libertarian free-will explanations, are the natural end point mistaking the interpreting experiences of volition”…”that’s how we could retire this debate about determinism…it really doesn’t matter”…”so it does not matter whether the Universe is deterministic or not”…??? “yet experiences of volition exist and they are extremely useful for the organism, but instead of directly revealing the causal fabric of the Universe, they are varieties, I argue, of self-related perception, that are intimately and constitutevly associated voluntary actions”…”volition is a kind of perception…what it means is that there is a continuity of…between these sorts of experiences of intending to do something…and all our experiences can be thought of as the brain meeting sensory information with its predictions about the causes of sensory information…all our perceptions are kind of controlled hallucinations, perceptual best guesses, about the way the world is”…”there are three defining features to our experiences of volition: 1) the feeling that I am doing what I want to do…Ex. When I voluntarily choose to make a cup of tee, that’s because making tea is aligned with my beliefs and desires”…2) the feeling that I could have done otherwise…3) voluntary actions seem to come from within…Then you perceptually infer that YOU have caused that action, but who is that YOU:…”YOU is a collection of perceptions prior believes, values, goals, memories, perceptions of the body that collectively make the experience of who you are, of which experiences of volition are themselves a part” … Hence the experiences of volition have the metaphysically subversive content that the experience is causing the action…(said otherwise) we project causal power into our experiences of volition…(And this is how we can navigate into complex environments, situations…with unique present time actions…And the question about here and now, that I could have done differently, is actually that given your present experience, it is that next time you might…)
“So to close — there is no free-will in the sense of soul-powered magic nonsense, that demands freedom from the laws of nature or from the casual fabric of the universe, what remains…is the freedom to act according to our beliefs, values and goals…to do as you wish to do and to make choices and think thoughts according to who we are, and that’s enough”…
-) Really very humbly here I would dare say that at my best understanding, however limited in might be, at particle physics level, our Universe is pretty much deterministic (even as possibilities for quantum randomness) and if ONE changes even a little bit of the forces of its quantum fabric…ex electrons, protons, neutrons an so…(presumably even quantum foam)…God knows what will/might happen…? So I do not believe in spooky free-will and conscientiousness dimensions neither, yet I would dare just mention the concept of Panpsychism ….. and that as an orthodox christian, I believe in the power of the Holy Spirit, not least***through our memories- and believes-motivated, present-time actions…
Dr. Philip Ball…”…choice is not something that atoms do, not even the neurons, which does not mean it’s not real…the Nobel Laureate physicist Philip Anderson explained this in 1972 — “the behaviour of large and complex elementary particles is not to be understood in terms of simple extrapolation of the properties of a few particles, instead in each level of complexity, entirely new properties appear and the understanding of the new behaviors, requires research with which is as fundamental in its nature as any other…ex psychology is not applied biology, nor is biology applied chemistry…(hence the higher levels of complexity) are the the true causal source…(of our choices)…Reductionist hard determinism is a pointless detour (of inductive search of causes for action)…The proper place to look for explanation of volitional actions and decisions is at one’s nonscientific and cognitive level…the settings in your brain chose and made you act, but that is YOU with all your innate tendencies, memories, experiences and feelings…So again it’s about finding the appropriate level for considering the causal origins of behaviour and that’s not atoms, not even neurons, it’s the brain circuitry…The brain is designed by the natural selection to be self-determining to generate its own reasons for action when the occasion demands…What really matters then in thinking about cause is not what will happen if we are thinking about future events or not what cased things happen in the past but rather what makes what happens happen…That’s the question. And if that causal explanation demands a representation of you as an autonomous agent, and I argue that both physics and neuroscience tell us that it does, then we need and should demand nothing more of free-will…”.*.*.*.
Professor Galen Strawson…”So I am going to talk the use of the word free-will…that lies at the heart of the problem…this quite simply is the use that is meant to mean that we are ultimately morally responsible for what we do, in such a way that it can be ultimately just or fair to punish us when we do something bad…that’s the thing most people care about…most people believe in…..:
premise 1) You do what you do because of the way you are;
premise 2) to be ultimately responsible for what you do, you have to be ultimately responsible for the way you are;
premise 3) but you can’t be ultimately responsible for the way you do — — Conclusion: You can’t be ultimately responsible for the way you are…for many reasons, including genetics and early upbringing, so conclusion — you can’t be fully responsible for what you do…???…because to be ultimately responsible for how you are, you’d have to have somehow set it up, that you are the way are, but for you to able to do that, you’d have to exist already with a certain outlook in order to be someone, who could set themselves up, to be the way they were, but then what if what about that person, who set up the person you are, you’d have to set them up, so you get an infinite regress…and an infinite regress means something that can’t isn’t possible…That’s why ultimate moral responsibility isn’t possible…and notice that this argument is, as philosophers say, a priori…Sciences has nothing to say”…?
-) Well again humbly, but I still believe that science has actually something to say even in the so presented chain of infinite regress…For instance the mathematical concept of limits towards zero…infinity or other numerical point, works pretty well in real terms world with close enough approximation towards the limit value.…Also the instantaneous speed in your car speedometer is also close enough approximation of the movement of your car/motorcycle… on Earth, with no need to be ultimately perfect…Furthermore I also think that such postmodernist concepts are prominent independent variables of the post-trust/truth society/result we live in…..
Professor Simon Blackburn…….”…if you can’t see or listen to and react to human beings as human beings…then that’s what results (…dishonesty, crimes, unjust behaviour, dictators…)”…”and we all should be on our guard against that…the free will debate…has also a moral aspect to it…(along with the academic discourse above and meaningfully elsewhere)…it can be in a sense wrong to demonize people to regard them as needing punishment, it can be, but can also be wrong to regard them as inhuman (…ex the nazis towards Jews…) to regard them as having no voice…and if your voice wasn’t heard, you would feel resentful, you would feel dissed…And you are right…because your humanity was being impugned”…So I wanted to concentrate on the moral aspects of this debate…And remember you may not have been to Auschwitz-birkenau, it’s most frightening experience and you haven’t…, well some of you might thank God you haven’t”…
Truly yours,…
