I don’t think any scientist, no matter how reasoned, could adequately answer this question – because it’ll boil down to semantics over the definition of “free will”, then devolve into solipsism. A better headline would be something like: “Renowned biologist argues his belief in lack of free will.”
and that is why math theorem starts with definitions of the terms.
And physics too :)
Free will is often defined as the capability to have done otherwise.
…which non-free-will folks will argue is irrelevant. You could have done different, if you had a reason to, but you didn’t.
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Punitive justice may not make sense without free will, but restorative and preventative justice still does.
At which point (if any) does someone deserve writing off as an asshole?
If someone kills a bunch of people no amount of philosophical quibbling and defining is going to make me think that person should be allowed to continue living in society, justice simply couldn’t be a concept at all in the absence of some form of free will
Wouldn’t it require an act of free will to decide that the murderer had no free will and therefore shouldn’t be jailed? If we have no free will and are always acting in response to that complex array of dominos, then the judge and jury sending the murderer to prison have the same amount of choice as the murderer.
That would be correct, the judge and jury have no more choice than the murderer, which is none. Hypothetically, the appearance of choice doesn’t mean there is choice or free will. As a slightly tortured analogy, like “perfect” loaded dice, which appear that they could be anything but always give the same result.
Time to make a dice which gives a specific result based on time
If you don’t know any math and I explain you why 1 + 1 = 2 and you get it, it’s not because you decided to understand. You helplessly did so and you can’t unlearn it anymore. There’s no free will in that.
This same applies to the judge and jury. If they truly understand the illusion of free will it will have an affect on how they relate to other people. You simply cannot blame them for their actions the same way once the illusion is broken. It’s like knowing the stove is hot and still touching it. You can do it but you’ll get burned and no matter of how hard you want to believe it’s cold it just isn’t and every attempt to live your life like it is just results in you getting burned again and again.
I think breaking the illusion would remove the concept of “blame” or vindictiveness from the judicial system, but not punishment. If a cog is broken in your watch, you remove it and get it fixed. You don’t remove it as punishment because the cog chose to misbehave, you do it because it’s necessary to get a fully working clock. Bringing it back to the court example, you put them in jail, not as punishment, but to protect society, rehabilitate, and/or set an example for others.
I feel like the level of mass education about the lack of free will required to make sure all judges and juries understand that murderers have no free will, would probably end up educating a lot of people with violent tendencies that they have no free will too - and if free will does exist, they now have an excuse not to even try to control themselves. Which the article did note has been observed in other studies.
I definitely agree there, as most philosophical subjects don’t really matter in a real sense. To me, though, this has some real implications regarding (pretty far in the future) AI development. If we were to say/prove humans have free will, that would be a potential bar to clear for when an “entity” is entitled to rights. It’s all largely arbitrary, though, as (at least in the US) we aren’t super rigorous to which animals are entitled to which rights. For instance, the Animal Welfare, which regulates when you have to use anesthesia, defines animals as
Animal means any live or dead dog, cat, nonhuman primate, guinea pig, hamster, rabbit, or any other warmblooded animal, which is being used, or is intended for use for research, teaching, testing, experimentation, or exhibition purposes, or as a pet. This term excludes birds, rats of the genus Rattus, and mice of the genus Mus, bred for use in research; horses not used for research purposes; and other farm animals, such as, but not limited to, livestock or poultry used or intended for use as food or fiber, or livestock or poultry used or intended for use for improving animal nutrition, breeding, management, or production efficiency, or for improving the quality of food or fiber. This term also excludes falconry. With respect to a dog, the term means all dogs, including those used for hunting, security, or breeding purposes
It is conceiviable for an entity to not have free will but still be consciouss. It feels like something to be that thing. It couldn’t choose their actions but they could experience pain and suffering. I don’t see a reason for such entity to not have rights only because they don’t have free will.
That’s true, I should have been more careful with my use of the word “rights.” What I meant regarding free will was whether or not they’d have all the same rights as a human. The Animal Welfare Act I think is a good example of where we convey a more limited set of rights to things which can experience pain, but don’t have free will*.
- This is obviously all super debatable and opinions vary, but I think there are at least a decent chunk of people who believe humans have free will and animals do not, Descarte being a famous example.
If someone kills a bunch of people no amount of philosophical quibbling and defining is going to make me think that person should be allowed to continue living in society, justice simply couldn’t be a concept at all in the absence of some form of free will, yet we require justice to cooperate in making better lives for ourselves. So the value of acting as if we have free will is more valuable than an esoteric philosophical truth.
Free will or not - if you have intentionally killed a bunch of people in the past it’s to be expected you’re likely to do it again. Such person shouldn’t be put to jail because we want to punish him. After all he could not have done otherwise. However as they’re danger to others something clearly needs to be done. They have to be separated from society in some way to prevent further harm but we should still treat them humanely and make sure their live is as good as it could be withing the circumstances.
If a bear wanders onto residential area we don’t shoot it because it’s evil. In my opinion the bear is no different from a murdered. They’re both slaves of their biology.
Is this theory even falsifiable?
I get what he’s saying, and in many ways I agree, but the choice of words is too strong for the hypotheses he’s presenting. For example, he uses the following to bolster his claim
Abundant evidence indicates that people who grew up in homes marked by chaos and deprivation will perceive the world differently and make different choices than people raised in safe, stable, resource-rich environments.
Yet he mentions himself that we are subject to our external environment. Some of these individuals do not make markedly different choices based on these external differences, not to mention their own internal ones (genetics, etc.).
To make the claim that we have no free will because we are the sum of our environment + upbringing ignores that we have a modicum of control over our environment, and it also ignores how our interactions provide that external environment. We pass laws to further human rights and create a better environment so that people in the future would hold them in higher esteem and be influenced by these choices we make. In short, there is a field of possibility that lies within the maybes - our genetics and upbringing set us up for how malleable we are on any decision. Some decisions simply won’t happen and some outcomes are likely inevitable, but most fall in the space where there is a likely but not predetermined outcome which is influenced by the environment. This is why perfect predetermination is impossible.
In fact, this very viewpoint is even reinforced in the most physical of sciences - physics. In quantum physics we can at best determine probable outcomes. While there are theorists who believe in superdeterminism, or the idea that we simply don’t have all the variables to determine everything perfectly yet, superdeterminism has gotten no closer to explaining bell tests, the slit experiment, or other quantum phenomenon in well over 50 years. Increasingly complicated mathematics repeatedly show that there is a fundamental randomness to the universe that we seem unable to capture.
And I think it makes sense, in the context of what we know of biology and evolution. Brains are constructed in a way where signals are created almost randomly, and then organized to make sense of the world. Evolution has played a part to refine this processing so that it ignores what’s not important to survival and proliferation. If this process weren’t generative and random in some sense, we would not evolve and there would be little to no purpose for diversity. The world is constantly changing and thus our biology must account for this, meaning that it must be malleable and open to changes by the environment. If it is open to changes by the environment, then we must be able to influence each other and thus a concept of free will must exist that at the very least is a representation of the sum of all that activity.
He argues that free will is a myth and we should accept it, but if our choices are predetermined, how do we even choose to accept or reject anything?
That’s more a technicality vs practicality aspect. Even if we technically don’t have free will, the way our minds work make us feel like we have free will. The “accept it” aspect of the argument is appealing to us feeling like we make our own decisions, even if ultimately we didn’t actually make the choice to accept it.
As most who have already commented here, I’m somewhat unimpressed (and would expect more analytical subtlety from a scientist). Wittgenstein already fully dissected the notion of “free will”, showing its semantic variety of meanings and how at some depth it becomes vague and unclear. And Nietzsche discussed why “punishment” is necessary and makes sense even in a completely deterministic world… Sad that such insights are forgotten by many scientists. Often unclear if some scientists want to deepen our understanding of things, or just want sensationalism. Maybe a bit of both…
Scientists can have opinions and beliefs. A news organization encouraging it as being a scientific conclusion only because it comes from a scientist is really the issue here.
Ultimately this a definition issue, and is philosophical more than scientific. I have no doubt he’s a great neuroscientist, but it’s really not a great take. I think that the whole idea of neurochemistry cascading into the decisions we make doesn’t mean we don’t have the ability to choose within our neurochemical makeup. I think it definitely pushing a good point in that the root causes of our behavior, especially anti-social behavior, is possibly addressable in how we support and raise our kids.
it’s insane to me that someone could understand the ramifications of trauma on neurobiology and conclude that free will doesn’t exist
i feel like, without free will, no one would ever escape their trauma. without saying something shitty and uncompassionate like “you’re only held back by your trauma because you’re not strong willed enough”; that’s not true at all
but i think, at it’s core, healing from trauma requires two things: a person who you feel safe enough to trust, and the willingness to take the leap and trust again
if you don’t have one or the other, you’re going to really struggle
and that moment where you choose to trust, how can you see that as anything but free will? when everything about your past, your nerves, your biology is screaming at you to do otherwise?
i dunno. i don’t think any of us would have grown past our trauma at all without free will
that said, i think there’s also just too much going on in the brain to conclude there’s no free will for sure. i guess that’s not the same as saying it’s deterministic, which you can’t really say, because physics gets too fucking weird at low levels, right?
anyways, i guess we can never really definitively say whether free will exists or not. but i think you can still make very strong arguments for being compassionate to poor people / traumatized people / people with mental illness / etc without saying we all don’t have free will. it feels a lot like saying we’re all doomed to be what we were made to be and we can’t make a better life for ourselves
it just starts with convincing people, and believing, that we all deserve that
and that moment where you choose to trust, how can you see that as anything but free will?
We don’t really know why one person chooses and the other one doesn’t. It could be genetic, history, chance. If free will exists and includes any of those then it isn’t 100% free will.
yeah no, my post is closer to “there’s more than 0% free will” than “there’s 100% free will”. i definitely know too much about trauma to think it’s 100%. but trauma get so deeply ingrained, and it’s so cyclical; that anyone can break free, seems nothing short of miraculous to me. to me, if we had no free will, that would never happen
Yeah it is an eternal mystery. And assholes will exploit compassion even though some people deserve compassion because of their circumstances (which may lead to crime). Conservatives tend to think only suckers have compassion for those that don’t “pick themselves up by the bootstraps”.
Even in a marriage there is tension because one does not know if their partner is exploiting good will. Relationships are hard and not a science, despite what the latest self-help book preaches.
i, uh, hm. well, in a marriage, you don’t know if someone is exploiting your goodwill, but ideally you marry someone who you don’t have to actively worry about it e.g. someone you can trust
relationships aren’t a hard science, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t science about them. for example, you could check out the book, “a general theory of love”. or you could check out the work of john gottman on relationships and love, he’s done a ton of work on them
for more general information on like, how humans work, you can check out paul ekman’s work on facial expressions and the facial action coding system (FACS). i’d also recommend marshall rosenberg’s non-violent communication - i don’t recall how strictly research-based the work is, but he (until he died, anyways) and his org do trainings across the world in this stuff, and he has a phd in clinical psychology, so i… think… it has a reasonable foundation? (it’s been a while since i read it)
and of course, because trauma invariably deeply affects relationships, you can read “the body keeps the score”, which is maybe the foremost research based text for the layperson about it
sorry, i’m not sure how open you are to actually receiving this kind of information… it’s totally understandable if you’re not. i used to feel a lot like you, i think, kind of unsure and untrusting of others. and all of these things are things i’ve read and learned from that have given me a lot more confidence about interacting with other people in general
obviously, the knowledge itself isn’t enough, but maybe you’ll find it helpful nonetheless
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Literally every week: We just did a study that proves free will doesn’t exist
Marx: For fuck sake.
Context
Dialectical materialism is the idea that your mind impacts the world as the world affects your mind. This means that while you are free to make decisions they are going to be influenced by the world around you. Under this, free will is equal parts your own actions and the actions of those around you. Liberalism (the ideology we live under today) uses a system called Idealism which is where your mind is the only thing that determines the outcome of an event, and opposite of that is Nihilism where all of your decisions are made for you. Because of decades of anticommunist propaganda, basic truths of scientific socialism are so buried that even scientists are unable to see basic truths staring them in the face, instead finding understanding in unscientific philosophy. If even one had knowledge of his work, they wouldn’t have made such a huge and obvious blunder.
This wasn’t a study and nobody has proven free will one way or another, the issue remains heavily semantic.
I think it’s more important to look at this issue from a social and political standpoint, rather than a metaphysical one, especially since the latter is essentially un-falsifiable.
But when you look at systemic bigotry, capitalistic drive creating underclasses and billionaire classes, monopolistic market forces, unafforadble basic necessities, violent policing of symptoms rather than compassionate remedying of causes of issues in society, etc., then you can start talking about how much your free will has a bearing when all of your choices are essentially already made for you, simply because a greedy oligarchy deemed it so. We can quantify these issues, and we can resolve them, if we as a society actually want to do so.
But that’s not what people want to do. So they muck about with metaphysical ramblings that can’t be measured or actioned, rather than doing anything of substance.
I knew they’d say that
Like almost any concept, the argument over free will really becomes semantic (and pedantic) when pushed to academic extremes. At a certain point it shifts to “is there a difference between free will and the apparent ability to choose what we do in any given moment?”
This scientist claims that the inability to tease any choice from the infinite variables that affect that decision means that the decision isn’t ours. It is an equally valid conclusion that you don’t need to know every single thing that influences you in order to have agency among those influences.
Moore’s take on the Cartesian question of “how do we know we exist?” is similar. It points out that the debate actually has nothing to do with existence, but what it means to “know” something, and that “knowing,” like anything, can of course be made impossible with philosophical and academic contortions (e.g., arguments like “but what if this is a simulation and there is a “great deception” that only convinces you that you exist?”). It is not that some form of knowing cannot exist, it is that people are capable of imagining fantasies in which knowing cannot exist, and Moore denies that we should let the ability to conceptualize something beyond the intended context of our language (i.e., perceived reality) pervert our ability to see and accept something concrete.
Is Moore right? Who knows, but he gets at the point that the answers to questions of free will, existence, ontology, etc. have more to do with how the questions are framed academically and philosophically than with how the same concepts actually operate in real life. It will always be possibly to frame a question (or to define the words within a question) in a way that denies the possibility of knowing or agency. But the ability to do so doesn’t mean that other methods of asking or knowing are impossible.
What would evidence of free will look like?
I think the only reason there is “debate” is that free will is so intuitive and needed to justify institutions like the church and the current state of the justice system.
If you parse a lay description of free will, it’s clear from a 1980s biology perspective, that free will is an illusion. “I chose to pick up the pen” is how our brain rationalize our actions. A better sentence would be “My brain decided to pick up the pen and it made sense to do so in retrospect and I passively observed this process”.
That all changed on a single night in his early teens, he says. While grappling with questions of faith and identity, he was struck by an epiphany that kept him awake until dawn and reshaped his future: God is not real, there is no free will, and we primates are pretty much on our own.
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Controversy
