Free Will is Political

free will our freedom to choose for ourselves is at the heart of our sense of being human how we think about free will affects everything from responsibility and criminal justice to laziness and poverty to seemingly ordinary choices like what i'll have for dinner free will is of course the power to select from options for ourselves an encumbered unrestrained uncaused to be the author of our own thoughts and actions today let's interrogate this what does this really mean in front of me i have some options playing a video game eating some cake filling out this job application and reading this book what does my freedom to choose between them consistent i could write or think through a pros and cons list for each option and pick that way for example i could choose to eat the cake and play video games for the following reasons i'm hungry i'm tired i've already worked hard today i have a genetic weakness for sugar but i've eaten healthily all week oh and it's my birthday we can say that each of these reasons top the reasons for working and so i chose freely from that option [Music] but is this really free will have i really chosen for myself these are all facts information feelings mental states and observations that have pushed me towards eating the cake but they are all causes that have affected me they've all appeared in my conscious reflection none of them are in that moment the choices within my control so where's the freedom in fact all of my choices are the effect of causes that have come before the entire universe and us within it is determined by the laws of cause and effect if the entire universe is determined by cause and effect then all of my choices have causes that precede me [Music] everything we do is moved by previous states of affairs in the universe we are like snookerballs knocked around by our genetic inheritance by our environment our education the social and political conditions that we're born into by the conversations we happen to have had in the youtube videos we happen to watch good choice by the way but where is the free world every effect has a cause that precedes it every choice has a cause even if the choice seems random even if there are no real good reasons that i can discern even if it's a choice between eggs and soup for lunch and one is as good as another i'm still just rolling the dice where is the free will where is the freedom in that cause and effect is a fundamental law of the universe and as the psychologist b f skinner says a small part of the universe is contained within the skin of each of us there's no reason why it should have any special physical status because it lies within this boundary to discover where that freedom is we must find a place in our psychological makeup that escapes this law of cause and effect we have to find a free place that is uncaused by anything that is truly free we have to become prime movers unmoved the masters of our own choices personal gods now you might be thinking but i still have desires i still have appetites and likes and dislikes they're mine they're within me they're the source of what i freely choose for myself yes responds the philosopher paul edwards but quote we must go on to ask where they come from and if determinism is true there can be no doubt about the answer to this question ultimately our desires and our whole character are derived from our inherited equipment and the environmental influences to which we are subject at the beginning of our lives it's clear that we had no hand in shaping these now you might say that the freedom was here at this very moment the moment i chose to eat the cake and play the video game well i lied it's not my birthday at all i should have been filling out the job application and i had the free will to choose between them and i chose poorly because i have no willpower and i don't care i could have chosen to exercise i could have chosen to have gone and do some work instead of eating the cake and playing the game but i don't care [Music] surely willpower our free choice not to steal to work hard to do the difficult but good thing to not lie and cheat to resist our weaker baser impulses and desires surely that is the source of our free will i control it it's the source of my personal responsibility surely i them in the driver's seat in fact free will as a philosophical problem is not particularly interesting if i'm picking between dinner options at random rolling the dice when we say he should have been filling out the job application or i should have been working out and keeping fit in fact in their survey of the topic philosophers michael mckenna and dirk pereboom define free will like this free will is the unique ability of persons to exercise the strongest sense of control over their actions necessary for moral responsibility so free will really is about willpower and moral responsibility making the correct whatever that means ethical choices i think there are two ways in which we can further explore what this means one is historical the other is philosophical let's start with the historical okay so the world is determined the way i throw these dice and how they land is determined by the precise movements in my muscles the position of each dice in my hand the friction of the table etc so what could free will possibly mean in this world in a landmark 1962 paper the philosopher pf strawson changed how this question was approached in freedom and resentment strawson argues that free will is not about cause and effect but is banged up in how we react to one another how we blame forgive praise admire respond to and recognize each other's language actions needs and so on free will then as it historically developed as a human concept is really about should he should have done this i should have done that it's about alts should ethical action in the world strawson writes that the central commonplace that i want to insist on is the very great importance that we each attach to the attitudes and intentions towards us of other human beings he says that our demand for respect love belonging and recognition means that we unavoidably resent people when we've been treated in ways we dislike or are unhelpful and conversely and unavoidably praise others when we're treated well he calls this our reactive attitudes imagine someone treating us or a friend poorly we might say they didn't mean to or they were unaware of what they were doing or it was an accident and quickly forgive them we might say they weren't themselves or were stressed or they'd been misled in these cases the resentment we feel towards them for treating us or someone else poorly quickly falls away but for various reasons self-protection reputation care for ourselves and friends and family sometimes we have a reactive attitude of resentment and hold the other person morally responsible we approve and disapprove of others words and actions in the world and this quite simply is the source of how free will likely developed as a concept we say they should have done otherwise they had a choice they were right or wrong free will only really exists in a relationship with the wider cultural social and political landscape out in the world we also make demands of ourselves based on these reactive attitudes we feel obligations based on our relationships based on how we're received in the world we have complex feelings of guilt remorse shame things that motivate us towards say filling out the job interview rather than lounging around strawson writes the central point is that the practices of holding someone morally responsible for blameworthy or for praiseworthy conduct must in some way make reference to the sorts of emotional responses the behavior is liable to elicit or to render appropriate so let's return to that historical and philosophical moment where i chose to eat the cake what will arise is a situation where there will be a social reactive attitude of disapproval because i didn't do the socially useful thing i lacked the appropriate amount of willpower so what is willpower what would it have taken for me to have chosen differently here [Music] the ancient greeks called a lack of willpower acrasia a weakness of the world a lack of self-control and absence of some type of strength plato likened our souls to a chariot being drawn by two different horses a white horse reason pulls the soul upwards towards applying for that job the black horse appetite pulls it down towards laziness hedonism and greed but as socrates believed it wasn't a lack of willpower but a lack of knowledge that made people choose poorly plato wrote that quote when people make a wrong choice of pleasures and pains that is of good and evil the cause of their mistake is a lack of knowledge what being mastered by pleasure really is is ignorance so what it actually would have taken me to resist the urge to eat the cake is different information but it's really not good for me that i'm one cake away from having a heart attack that this job application this job is the one that's gonna net me that dream job but there is also my condition in that moment when someone says his willpower was not strong enough there's the assumption of some kind of weakness so what would it have taken for this willpower to be stronger for me to have made the right the correct the quote ethical choice desires temptations cravings the wrong choices are often imagined as if they're pressuring us bearing down upon us forcing us drawing us in like a magnet that will power is like a muscle that has to use strength to resist and it's clearly true that if we think of willpower as a muscle we can conceive of it as being weaker or stronger from time to time from person to person so the question becomes what makes it stronger or weaker what could i have done before making that choice to strengthen it maybe i was tired exhausted even and so weaker maybe i didn't think through my choice properly maybe i should have reflected more maybe when i glanced at the application i found it difficult because there were questions i couldn't answer maybe this was the 20th application i'd filled out maybe i lacked confidence what we find when we analyze the concept of willpower is that it's really just more contextual information more background conditions that influence that decision more of those previous causes that precede us if i'm happy healthy there are good prospects for a job i'm well educated say well guess what my willpower is suddenly strengthened a bit more so willpower just consists in being in a certain healthy condition in having the right genetic makeup maybe but that's still out of your control and being in a healthy social and cultural and political context of knowing the correct information to get the job done whatever it is how are you at fault if you lack vital information if you live in poverty with no prospects if i have the genetic predisposition towards sugar as the rationalist philosopher baruch spinoza argued my free will in air quotes impulse to eat the cake rather than fill out the job application will only be reversed when the free will and air quotes impulse to fill in the application becomes stronger than the impulse to eat the cake if we find ourselves in a favorable biological state with favourable knowledge in a favorable context the likelihood of us making the right decision that will power goes up dramatically does this mean that how we talk about freedom and responsibility doesn't matter no if consciousness is floating over the edge of a waterfall watching the water of life fall over floating barrels of thoughts passions and experience appearing on the horizon of the mind crashing and colliding with one another in the rapids then falling over the edge turning into action then we have no control over what comes and goes what appears and disappears however that doesn't mean that the perspective on the waterfall its flora and fauna the shape of it are floating above it where we're looking what hits us and what doesn't doesn't matter doesn't have meaning how we think about interpret and talk about the waterfall of free will and responsibility still matters but the perspective widens the cultural social political and economic context of the waterfall matters [Music] so if we want to strengthen the social glow the responsibility the willpower that is philosophically central to the idea of free will then free will is inevitably a political concept if willpower is like going to the gym then you're more likely to be successful if you're well fed watered healthy well educated and employed with enough hours left over to be energized so we want to strengthen that context of social willpower making sure the resources that make us all stronger are as widely dispersed and of higher quality as possible [Music] thank you as always for watching and a huge thanks of course as always to my patreons without which this just wouldn't be possible so if you want to see scripts if you want to chat in the discord server if you want your name in the credits but most of all if you just want to help support make this content then click the link in the description below if not you can like you can share you can leave a comment all those things that help the algorithm thank you so much and i'll see you next time [Music] [Music]

Channel: Then & Now

Views: 52,214

Keywords: free will, responsibility, determinism, free will vs determinism, determinism debunked, determinism debate, determinism vs indeterminism, determinism vs fatalism, spinoza, strawson, plato, socrates

Id: N5wFFRBBG7M

Length: 19min 39sec (1179 seconds)

Published: Tue May 24 2022