Do We Have Free Will? | RIGSS Dialog part 6

we all like to believe that we are the masters of our own destiny and with Free Will and that with education and now the internet that this is even more so this is what we like to believe but you paint a very different picture and in fact the picture you paint challenges the whole notion of Free Will as commonly understood so let me quote you uh Professor you write that if Free Will is freedom to do what you desire you humans have free will but if Free Will means the freedom to choose what you desire then we don't have free will please explain yes I mean it's when people hear we have no free will they say but I feel that I'm doing what I want and yes this obviously this is true and this is true of humans this is true of chimpanzees this is true of elephants this is true friend rats right a red one to run something somewhere she or he feels yes I want to run the right round there if this is what is meant by free meal there is no no argument but the idea that I can choose my own desires I can like I have freedom over my will I can tell myself now you want this no no now you want that it doesn't work from our own experience we know that uh what we like to eat the people we like are sexual attraction we have no control over it or very very little control over it my main issue is with the the idea of free will it makes people uncurious about themselves like one of the biggest questions in life is what is the source of my desires what is the source of my decisions why do I want these things why did I make this decision now if you believe in Free Will it makes you lose curiosity why did I chose this because this is my free will end of story there is nothing to investigate if you don't believe in Free Will or you are willing to kind of withhold judgment I don't know let's investigate what really caused me to desire this particular thing then you start investigating and when you start investigating you realize that there are so many things that manipulate my desires other people manipulate my desires religious and cultural ideas influence my desires um things that happen within my body influence my desires like as we study in depth the human body the human brain the DNA we realize so many biological processes that we know nothing about like 99 of the processes in your body happen without our understanding and knowledge as you're now sitting listening to me so many things happen in your brain in your body that you have no no idea they are happening so we know very little about what really shapes our emotions our feelings our desires if you make and and again the key to that is to realize maybe I don't know why why I made this decision let's investigate let's investigate if after a long investigation you find that there is some type of freedom in yourself then okay if that is the result of your investigation then fine but it should not be taken as a kind of uh uh pressure position I made these decisions because I have free will that I think that real freedom for humans is not something they have it's something they have to struggle for yes you make that point in the book that if you if you made if you you have time to struggle for for your whole life and then maybe you have some real freedom and often real freedom is not the freedom to exercise your will or to choose your will it's the freedom from your will that okay I want this it but it doesn't this desire doesn't necessarily control my life and this is something that needs a lot of of work to to do true true

Channel: Yuval Noah Harari

Views: 11,856

Keywords:

Id: lXloGX2552I

Length: 4min 24sec (264 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 02 2023