The great free will debate | Bill Nye, Michio Kaku, Robert Sapolsky, Steven Pinker & more
Summary
TLDRThe video explores the complex debate around free will, with experts like Daniel Dennett, Steven Pinker, and Robert Sapolsky offering their perspectives. Dennett suggests that free will arises from biological evolution, while Pinker emphasizes the brain's complexity in decision-making. Sapolsky argues that free will is a myth, shaped by biological factors. The discussion also touches on the implications of determinism and quantum uncertainty, suggesting that while we may not have absolute free will, we are responsible for our actions. The video challenges the idea of free will as an illusion and highlights its social and moral consequences.
Takeaways
- 🧠 The concept of free will is deeply intertwined with the complexities of the human brain and consciousness.
- 🌐 Free will is considered to have evolved alongside biological and cognitive abilities, particularly in evolutionary biology.
- 🤔 The ability to choose is often confused with the idea of free will, and human choices are not easily predictable.
- 🧪 Some experts argue there is no free will at all, suggesting our actions are determined by physical processes in the brain.
- 🔬 The brain's vast complexity, with billions of neurons and trillions of synapses, contributes to the unpredictability of human behavior.
- 🍨 Different types of behavior are influenced by the brain; some are involuntary reflexes, while others involve conscious decision-making.
- 🧬 Factors such as genetics, environment, and biochemistry all play a role in shaping our ability to make choices.
- 🎲 The Heisenberg uncertainty principle introduces an element of unpredictability, suggesting some degree of free will in decision-making.
- 👥 Responsibility and social constructs are integral to the concept of free will, influencing how we perceive our own agency.
- 🚗 The idea of personal responsibility is not diminished by the mechanistic understanding of the brain; it's a social agreement.
- 📚 Thought experiments, like the nefarious neurosurgeon, challenge the notion that neuroscience can definitively prove or disprove free will.
Q & A
What is the main philosophical question discussed in the transcript?
-The main philosophical question discussed in the transcript is the existence and nature of free will.
What does Daniel Dennett argue about the evolution of free will?
-Daniel Dennett argues that free will is a result of evolutionary biology, where greater cognitive competences have evolved over billions of years, allowing humans to represent reasons to themselves and others, which is key to responsibility and free will.
How does Steven Pinker view free will in relation to physical processes in the brain?
-Steven Pinker does not believe in free will as a 'ghost in the machine' but sees human behavior as a product of physical processes in the brain. He distinguishes between reflexive behaviors and those involving complex decision-making processes that incorporate information and predict consequences.
What is Robert Sapolsky's stance on free will?
-Robert Sapolsky expresses skepticism about the existence of free will, suggesting that many factors, from current physical states to early biological development, influence our actions, and that the concept of free will might be a myth.
How does Michio Kaku connect the concept of free will with Newtonian determinism and the Heisenberg uncertainty principle?
-Michio Kaku discusses Newtonian determinism, which suggests a predetermined universe, and contrasts it with the Heisenberg uncertainty principle, which introduces the element of chance. He suggests that this uncertainty could imply a form of free will.
What is Joscha Bach's perspective on free will and responsibility?
-Joscha Bach views free will as related to responsibility, which is a social construct. He emphasizes that decisions made with an understanding of their impact on others and the potential consequences are indicative of free will.
How does Michael Gazzaniga differentiate between the brain's automatic functions and human freedom?
-Michael Gazzaniga differentiates by stating that while brains operate automatically, people are free within the context of social norms and laws. He uses the analogy of cars and traffic to explain that understanding individual components (brains) doesn't negate the higher-level organization (social responsibility).
What is an 'intuition pump' according to Daniel Dennett?
-An 'intuition pump' is a thought experiment, often in the form of a story or fable, designed to lead to an intuitive conclusion about a philosophical issue. Dennett uses them to challenge assumptions and provoke thought.
What is the 'nefarious neurosurgeon' thought experiment mentioned by Dennett?
-The 'nefarious neurosurgeon' thought experiment is a scenario where a neurosurgeon deceives a patient into believing their actions are controlled, effectively convincing them they lack free will. Dennett uses this to argue against the idea that suggesting a lack of free will can have real-world consequences.
What was the outcome of the experiment where participants read about free will being an illusion?
-In the experiment, participants who read that free will is an illusion cheated more frequently on a subsequent task than those who did not read the passage, suggesting that belief in free will can influence moral behavior.
How does the transcript suggest that the belief in free will affects behavior?
-The transcript suggests that belief in free will is crucial for personal responsibility and moral behavior. It implies that undermining this belief can lead to negligence and a decrease in ethical decision-making.
Outlines
🧠 The Enigma of Free Will and Neuroscience
This paragraph explores the concept of free will from a philosophical and scientific perspective. It begins by questioning the existence of free will despite unchanged physics over billions of years, suggesting that our sense of freedom is a recent biological development. Daniel Dennett argues that our advanced cognitive abilities, evolved through biology and particularly evolutionary biology, set us apart from other species. He emphasizes our unique capacity to represent reasons to ourselves and others, which is key to responsibility and the anticipation of consequences. Dennett also discusses the illusion of consciousness and the lack of a 'boss part' in the brain, suggesting that our decisions are made by various subsystems competing to execute projects. Steven Pinker contributes by expressing disbelief in free will as a spiritual entity, proposing instead that our behavior is a product of physical brain processes, though complex and not simply predictable.
🤔 The Complexity of Free Will and Determinism
The second paragraph delves deeper into the nature of free will, distinguishing between reflexive behaviors and those that involve conscious decision-making, which engages vast neural networks, particularly the frontal lobes. It suggests that while free will exists in a realm separate from involuntary reflexes, it doesn't necessitate the existence of a soul. Robert Sapolsky offers a skeptical view, suggesting that free will, if it exists, is confined to mundane decisions, and that many factors from current physical discomfort to early developmental influences can sway our choices. Michio Kaku introduces the concepts of Newtonian determinism and the Heisenberg uncertainty principle, suggesting that while the universe may be unpredictable at a quantum level, this doesn't necessarily translate to human free will. Joscha Bach reflects on the social construct of responsibility and how it influences our decisions, viewing free will as a discourse influenced by social interfaces rather than a deterministic or probabilistic universe.
📚 Social Constructs and the Illusion of Free Will
The third paragraph continues the discourse on free will, with Michael Gazzaniga emphasizing the importance of personal responsibility as a social construct rather than a product of brain mechanics. He uses the analogy of understanding cars versus understanding traffic to illustrate that knowing how brains work doesn't negate the social responsibility we hold each other to. Dennett introduces the concept of 'intuition pumps,' or thought experiments, as tools to provoke thought and persuasion, warning against the potential harm of suggesting that neuroscience disproves free will. He presents a hypothetical scenario where a neurosurgeon's claim to control a patient's actions leads to the patient's moral downfall, questioning the ethics of such claims and their impact on personal responsibility.
🚨 The Consequences of Dismissing Free Will
The final paragraph presents a thought experiment where a neurosurgeon tricks a patient into believing their actions are controlled, leading to the patient's moral and legal transgressions. The patient's defense of lacking free will is met with the revelation that the neurosurgeon was joking, highlighting the harm caused by such misinformation. Dennett extends this critique to neuroscientists who publicly claim that free will is an illusion, suggesting that this message can lead to a decrease in personal responsibility and an increase in unethical behavior, as demonstrated in an experiment where subjects who read about free will as an illusion were more likely to cheat.
Mindmap
Keywords
💡Free Will
💡Determinism
💡Evolutionary Biology
💡Cognitive Competence
💡Responsibility
💡Consciousness
💡Neuroscience
💡Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle
💡Social Interface
💡Epigenetics
💡Illumination of the Neurosurgeon
Highlights
The question of free will is deeply philosophical and intertwined with physics.
For billions of years, life existed without free will; it's a recent evolutionary development.
The concept of free will is not explained by physics alone but also by biology and evolution.
Human cognitive competence has evolved to a level far beyond other species.
Our ability to represent reasons to ourselves is key to our sense of responsibility.
The power to anticipate and evaluate consequences is a hallmark of human freedom.
Consciousness provides only superficial access to our mental processes.
The brain's complexity makes human behavior unpredictable.
Human choices engage vast neural networks, particularly the frontal lobes.
The brain's setup allows for both reflexive and complex, considered behaviors.
Free will might be a myth, with many biological and environmental factors influencing decisions.
The idea of free will is shrinking as we understand more about biological influences.
Our brains' complexity is a result of evolutionary development.
Newtonian determinism suggests a predetermined universe, while quantum mechanics introduces uncertainty.
Free will might be influenced by discourse and social constructs.
Responsibility is a social concept that doesn't necessarily conflict with mechanistic brain function.
The social network and its rules are crucial for maintaining accountability and freedom.
Intuition pumps, or thought experiments, are used to provoke thought and can influence behavior.
Believing in a lack of free will can lead to morally and socially irresponsible behavior.
Neuroscientific claims about the absence of free will can have real-world consequences.
Transcripts
- Well, you ask one of the deepest philosophical questions of physics. The question of free will.
- For billions of years on this planet, there was life, but no free will.
Physics hasn't changed, but now we have free will.
- The brains are automatic, but people are free.
- Our ability to choose is often confused.
- Human choices will not be predictable in any simple way.
- In reality, I don't think there's any free will at all.
DANIEL DENNETT: For billions of years on this planet there was life, but no free will. Physics hasn't changed,
but now we have free will. The difference is not in physics. It has to do with, ultimately,
with biology. Particularly evolutionary biology. What has happened over those billions of years,
is that greater and greater competences have been designed and have evolved.
And the competence of a dolphin, or of a chimpanzee, the cognitive competence,
the sort of mental competence, is hugely superior to the competence of a lobster, or a starfish. But
ours dwarfs the competence of a dolphin or a chimpanzee, perhaps to an even greater extent.
And there's an entirely naturalistic story to say, to tell about how we came to have that competence,
or those competences. And it's that, "Can do." It's that power that we have which is natural,
but it's that power which sets us aside from every other species. And the key to it is that we
don't just act for reasons. We represent our reasons
to ourselves and to others. The business of asking somebody, "Why did you do that?"
And the person being able to answer, it is the key to responsibility. And in fact, the word,
"responsibility," sort of wears its meaning on its sleeve. We are responsible because we can respond
to challenges to our reasons. Why? Because we don't just act for reasons,
we act for reasons that we consciously represent to ourselves. And this is what gives us the power
and the obligation to think ahead, to anticipate, to see the consequences of our action.
To be able to evaluate those consequences in the light of what other people tell us.
To share our wisdom with each other. No other species can do anything like it.
And it's because we can share our wisdom that we have a special responsibility.
That's what makes us free in a way that no bird is free, for instance. There's a very sharp
limit to the depth that we as conscious agents can probe our own activities. This sort of superficial
access that we have to what's going on, that's what consciousness is. Now, when I say,
who's this, "we," who's got this access? That's itself part of the illusion because there isn't
a, sort of, boss part of the brain that's sitting there with this limited access. That itself
is part of the illusion. What it is, is a bunch of different subsystems, which have
varying access to varying things and that conspire in a sort of competitive way to
execute whatever projects it is that they're, in their, sort of, mindless way executing.
STEVEN PINKER: I don't believe there's such a thing as free will in the sense of a ghost in
the machine, a spirit, or soul that somehow reads the TV screen of the senses and pushes buttons
and pulls levers of behavior. There's no sense that we can make of that. I think we are...our
behavior is the product of physical processes in the brain. On the other hand, when you
have a brain that consists of a hundred billion neurons, connected by a hundred trillion synapses,
there is a vast amount of complexity. That means that human choices will not be predictable in any
simple way from the stimuli that have impinged on it beforehand. We also know that that brain
is set up so that there are at least two kinds of behavior. There's what happens when
I shine a light in your eye and your iris contracts, or I hit your knee with a hammer
and your leg jerks upward. We also know that there's a part of the brain that does things like
choose what to have for dinner, whether to order chocolate, or vanilla ice cream.
How to move the next chess piece. Whether to pick up the paper, or put it down. That
is very different from your iris closing when I shine a light in your eye. It's that second
kind of behavior, one that engages vast amounts of the brain, particularly the frontal lobes,
that incorporates an enormous amount of information in the causation of the behavior,
that has some mental model of the world, that can predict the consequences of possible behavior
and select them on the basis of those consequences. All of those things carve
out the realm of behavior that we call free will. Which it is useful to distinguish from
brute involuntary reflexes, but which doesn't necessarily have to involve some mysterious soul.
ROBERT SAPOLSKY: The polite thing that I've sort of said for decades, is that, well, if there's
free will, it's in all the boring places and those places were getting more and more cramped.
If you want to insist that today you decided to floss your teeth starting on your upper teeth,
rather than your lower teeth, rather than the other way around, that that was an act of free
will, whatever, I'll grant that one to you, that's where the free will is. In reality, I don't think
there's any free will at all. If you look at the things that come into account as to whether or not
someone is going to do the right thing in the next two seconds amid a temptation to do otherwise,
and the variables in there reflect everything from whether they are having gas pains that day,
because of something unpleasant they ate that morning that makes us
more selfish, more impulsive, et cetera, to what epigenetic effects occurred to them than when they
were a first trimester fetus. When you look at the number of things we recognize now that are
biological organic, where 500 years ago, or five years ago,
we would have had a harsh moral judgment about it. And instead we now know, "Oh, that's a biological
phenomenon." And when we're we gonna get to the point is recognizing, "Yeah, we're biological
organisms." This notion of free will, for want of a less provocative word, is nothing but a myth.
NYE: Our brains are complicated and they got this big, or as big as they are organically
through evolution, with layer being added upon layer. So our ability to choose
is often confused. Our ability to make choices and is often affected by the
environment, by our experiences and by biochemistry. The shape of our brain.
MICHIO KAKU:
Well, you ask one of the deepest philosophical questions of physics. The question of free will.
First of all, there's something called, Newtonian determinism. Newtonian determinism says that the
universe is a clock. A gigantic clock that's wound up at the beginning of time and it's been ticking
ever since, according to Newton's laws of motion. So, what you're gonna eat 10 years from now on
January 1st has already been fixed. It's already known using Newton's laws of motion. Einstein
believed in that. Einstein was a determinist. And some people asked Einstein, "Well, does that mean
"that a murderer, a horrible mass murderer "isn't really guilty of his works "'cause it was already
preordained billions of years ago?" And Einstein said, "Well, yeah, in some sense, that's true.
"That even mass murderers were predetermined. "But," he said, "They should still be placed
in jail," okay? Heisenberg then comes along and proposes the Heisenberg uncertainty principle.
And says, "Nonsense. "There's uncertainty. "You don't know where the electron is. "It could be
here, here, or many places simultaneously." And this of course, Einstein hated because he said,
"God doesn't play dice with the universe." Well, hey, get used to it. Einstein was wrong.
God does play dice. Every time we look at an electron, it moves. There's uncertainty with
regards to the position of the electron. So what does that mean for free will? It means, in some
sense, we do have some kind of free will. In the sense that no one can determine your future events
given your past history. There's always the wild card. There's always the possibility
of uncertainty in whatever we do. So this means that free will, determining the future?
Hey, these are philosophical questions that seem to indicate that we have some kind of free will.
JOSCHA BACH: Like consciousness, free will is often misunderstood because we know it
by reference. But it's difficult to know it by content, what you really mean by free will. A lot
of people will immediately feel that free will is related to whether the universe is deterministic,
or probabilistic. And while physics has some ideas about that, which change every now and then,
it's not part of our experience. And I don't think it makes a difference if the universe forces you
randomly to do things, or deterministically. The important thing seems to me that in free
will you are responsible for your actions. And responsibility is a social interface.
For instance, if I am told that if I do X I go to prison and this changes my decision to
whether or not to do X, I'm obviously responsible for my decision because it was an appeal to my
responsibility, in some sense. Or likewise, if I do a certain thing that it causes harm to other
people and I don't want that harm to happen, that influences my decision. This is a discourse
of decision-making that I would call it's a free will decision. Will is the representation that my
nervous system, at any level of its functioning, has raised a motive to an intention. It has
committed to a particular kind of goal and it gets integrated into the story of myself. This protocol
that I experience as myself in this world. And that was what I experienced as well, as a real
decision. And this decision is free in as much as this decision can be influenced by discourse.
MICHAEL GAZZANIGA: The essential part of free will that people wanna hold on to is the sense
that that therefore makes you responsible for your actions. So, there is the idea of personal
responsibility. And I think that's very important. And I don't think that all this mechanistic
work on the brain in any way threatens that. You learn that responsibility is to
be understood at the social level. The deal, the rules that we work out, living together.
So the metaphor I like to use is cars and traffic. We can study cars and all their physical
relationships and know exactly how that works. It in no way prepares us to understand traffic
when they all get together and start interacting. That's another level of organization and
description of these elements interacting. So the same is with brains. That we can understand brains
to the nth degree and that's fine and that's what we're doing, but it's not going to, in any way,
interfere with the fact that taking responsibility in a social network is done at that level.
So, the way I sum it up is that brains are automatic, but people are free
because people are gonna be...are joining the social group and in that group are laws to live
by. And it's interesting, every social network, whether it's artifactual, internet, or people,
that accountability is essential, or the whole thing just falls apart.
DENNETT:
Intuition pumps are sometimes called thought experiments. More often, they're called thought
experiments. But they're not really formal arguments. Typically, they're stories. They're
little fables. In fact, I think they're similar to Aesop's fables in that they they're supposed
to have a moral. They're supposed to teach us something. And what they do, is they lead the
audience to an intuition, a conclusion, where you sort of pound your fist on the table and you say,
"Oh yeah, it's gotta be that way, doesn't it?" And if it achieves that, then it's
pumped the intuition that was designed to pump. These are persuasion machines. They're little
persuasion machines that philosophers have been using for several thousand years.
One of my recent favorites, which I devised to jangle the nerves of neuroscientists who've been
going around saying that neuroscience shows that we don't have free will.
I think their reasons for saying that are ill-considered and moreover that what they're
doing is apt to be mischievous and doing some real harm. So, I concocted a little thought experiment,
a little intuition pump to suggest that. So this is the case of the nefarious neurosurgeon,
who treats a patient who has obsessive compulsive disorder by inserting a little microchip in his
brain, which controls the OCD, the obsessive compulsive disorder. Now, there is such a chip.
It's been developed in the Netherlands and it works really quite well. That's science fact,
but now here comes science fiction. So the neurosurgeon, after she's operated on the guy,
sewed him all up, say, "Okay, your OCD is under control now you'll be happy to learn,
but moreover our team here will be monitoring you 24/7 and we're going to be controlling
everything you do from now on. You will think you have free will. You'll think you're making
your own decisions, but really you won't have free will at all. Free will is an illusion that
we will maintain while controlling you. Goodbye, have a nice life." Sends him out the door. Well,
he believes her. She has a shiny lab and, you know, lots of degrees and diplomas and all that.
So, what does he do? Well, he, thinking he doesn't have free will anymore, he gets a little
self-indulgent, a little bit aggressive, little negligent in how he decides what to do. And pretty
soon, by indulging some of his worst features, he's got himself in trouble with the law. And he's
arrested and he's put on trial. And at the trial he says, "But your honor, I don't have free will.
I'm under the control of the team at the neurosurgery clinic." They say,
"What's this?" And they call the neurosurgeon to the stand. And say, "Did you tell this man that
you are controlling his every move, he didn't have free will?" She says, "Yeah, I did, yeah,
but I was just messing with his head. That was just a joke. I didn't think he'd believe me."
Now, right there, I think we can stop, take a deep breath and say, well she did something really
bad. That was...that was really, she really harmed that man. In fact, her little "joke,"
telling him that, actually accomplished non-surgically pretty much what she claimed to
accomplish surgically. She disabled him by telling him he didn't have free will. She
pretty much turned his free will off and turned him into a morally incompetent person.
Now, if we agree that she did a bad thing, if nobody recommends people play jokes like this,
what are we to say about the neuroscientists who are telling the public every day, "We've shown in
our neuroscience labs that nobody has free will." I think if the neuroscientists recognize that what
my imaginary neurosurgeon did was irresponsible, they should think seriously about whether it's
irresponsible of them to make these claims about free will. And it's not just a fantasy.
Vohs and Schooler, in an important paper, which has been replicated in several different ways,
set up an experiment, really to test this with college students, who were
given two texts to read. One was a text. They were both from Francis Crick's book, "The
Astonishing Hypothesis," and one was not about free will. And the other was about free will. And
basically it said, "Free will is an illusion. All your decisions are actually determined by
causes that neuroscience is investigating. You don't have free will. That's just an illusion."
All right, so there we have two groups. The group that read that passage and the group that read
another passage from that book of the same length. After they've read the passage, they are given a
puzzle to solve where they can earn some money by solving it. And the experimenters cleverly
made the puzzles slightly defective, so there was a way of cheating on the puzzle. That was,
oops, inadvertently revealed to the subjects. And guess what? The subjects who'd read the passage
where Crick says, "Free will is an illusion," cheated at a much higher rate than the other ones.
In other words, just reading that passage did have the effect of making them
less concerned about the implications of their actions and they became, as it were, negligent,
or worse, in their own decision-making.
5.0 / 5 (0 votes)