Matt Dillahunty VS Stephen Woodford on Compatibilism

[Music] so hello everybody thank you for tuning in if your life and if you're not live then thank you of course to I am afforded the opportunity here to speak with Matt Dillahunty which is an intellectual hero of mine and we've just been discussing how you shouldn't meet your heroes and so all good I created a video dedicated to Matt Dillahunty his position on free will and more particularly on compatibilism which I've linked in the description and Matt has had the time to watch it and has notes ready to have a conversation with me so without further ado we're just going to dive straight into it so Matt what was wrong with my video almost nothing and that's the fun part is you know I don't tend to watch YouTube videos I don't tend to listen to podcasts I mean that's true right I've been doing events with Sam now for a while and I've I don't think I've ever listened to a full episode of waking up it's I just don't have the time in the schedule and so people were like posting on Twitter oh you need to go watch this video from rationality really takes you down on you know compatibilism and I was like yeah yeah whatever and it was actually Anthony Magna Bosco who was just here at the house but I don't know a week or so ago whenever it was you had posted a video on Jordan Peterson's true thing and I was like crap people keep linking me these guys videos so I watched the Jordan Peterson one first because I've got a thing coming up with him and I thought it was great and I was like well what issues could this guy possibly have with you know what I said so I watched the video on me and papal ism and the funny thing is my wife was sitting next to me on the couch she wasn't watching the video but she could hear him and I would pause and jot down some notes and she would from off to the side go yeah I think he's right no I'm writing that down now but I think he's right so I didn't get a chance to come back and listen to it this morning because something else came up that was the intent there's a couple things and this is gonna be kind of loose because this is the notes so jump in and clarify or whatever else yeah but I think the first note I took was a question from you of why call it free will and not just will yes judges for anyone listening we are just jumping into it so if you want the context for this conversation if you don't already know Matt's previous positions if I can say that because it sounds like you slightly changed on certain things and if you haven't seen the video that I created then it would just give you the context to understand the conversation that's happening now so yeah go ahead tell me tell me the answer yeah so the short version is I really don't care whether somebody refers to it as will or free will it's not a big enough deal from and that's not a dismissal of semantics because as we talked about before semantics is important it's about word usage and what they mean and it's that you can't have communication without it so when people say oh that's just a semantic argument I want to scream that's the one you should be having first let's get the usage I'm not particularly bothered if somebody wants to call it will because what I'm largely talking about is the desires of agents and to what extent they are limited either by the physical laws of the universe versus some other agents actions but I do think that there may be some justification for calling it freewill although I think that actually comes up a bit later in the notes because I think you came back to this issue of calling it will versus freewill and the examples that I tried to use some of them that you called out I just kind of have to agree with but there's a few things that I might take issue with but there was shortly after that I you had a clip of me saying something and you followed it up with are you sure about that yes that no I'm actually not sure nor am i claiming certainty upon anything and it was about a statement I made about what most people think of with regard to freewill and this was the first point where my wife jumped in to say you were right that was like I know I'm already writing this down because upon reflection I think what I was talking about was from the standpoint my standpoint of after acknowledging that libertarian free will isn't real that it that's just nonsense when you get rid of that part that's not real and start looking at the other things that people care about related to free will I think that what I was presenting is what people care about if you were able to to kind of drill down to that so and by what they care about the example I'd used was Sam could jump off the stage or I could throw him off the stage and the end results essentially the same the difference between those two is all about two agents and their desires and which one's going to be imposed on another one it everything about that gets you to moral responsibility which is one of the foundational things that people care about with free will Sam and I were in agreement on that we're also in agreement that whether you have free will or not there's still a rational justification for moral accountability or at least an agent accountability if you don't want to go down the the moral thing you know if my lawnmowers broken my lawnmowers broken it doesn't matter whether it had free will to break and I think so the Contra causal freewill stuff the libertarian stuff that people are like oh yes if I could go back in time I would do it differently mmm I really think that they're not recognizing that what they're saying is if I could go back in time with the knowledge I have now some of them may be saying ah if we reroute the clock I would do it differently and that's just bizarre I mean that's mmm I see no justification for saying that would happen but I think this is a suspicion of mine and it probably doesn't apply to everybody so the mistake my part was to kind of forcibly say what people really care care about is this when I have no evidence that that's what really care about this just this is what I suspect if you were able to talk to them and say okay what's your concern here why is it that you want to have for you will oh well then make sure that I'm not merely a a puppet of the universe that I get to make decisions and they don't seem to recognize the difference between an agent with a brain that is capable of reflection on past incidents and to consider the potential causes of action that makes a decision it doesn't matter whether you're whether hands-free consciousness they they seem to think that if you if you say you don't have free will you are now a meat robot that doesn't have that self reflection that doesn't have the ability to change future decisions based on past results which neither samurai say yeah I know I I see the angle that you're going from there is something that needs to be retained I'm completely on board with you there I just I think the word to use is will rather than free will and I have several reasons for that which we can dive into further but on the point of where you were saying when people say oh I would have thought I would have done that differently you're right anyone that accepts determinism they that they mean that in a sense that they with the knowledge they have now they would go back and do it differently and I know that for sure but because most people are not people that accept determinism most people are religious for example and and they are religious in the kinds that isn't deterministic like Calvinists etc I think that when they say it that way what's implicit is that they could have done otherwise we've all without the knowledge they just they made a mistake and they would want to have done it otherwise and that seems to be the case for when you're talking with anybody who doesn't really understand who isn't interested in philosophy and who doesn't understand compatibilist position the thing is is we're born with the illusion of free will it's not like a cultural thing it's not a product of religion we are born and we experience the world and we in this illusion is incredibly powerful so the default position is that we all experience the illusion of free will and so I think it's right to say listen that illusion that free will is wrong you we'll and that's all you should care about and here's why but that illusion is wrong what I see compatibilism is doing if going in and read far earn free winking you can do that because I agree with you when you say it's just language language on earth isn't Authority its tools and we can redefine define if we like but I think it's we're not gonna get the result that we want as fast as if we just called it will because when you say to somebody listen you don't have free will but you have will what you are they will listen in the sense that you're saying that is really an illusion the thing that you're actually caring about right now but this this part isn't it seems to be part of whether or not whether or not the inclusion of the of the free modifier brings along too much baggage compared you to the benefits and there's a couple of notes I had here because this was the sticking point of the whole thing and it's really not that much of a sticking point because I'm okay with talking about it as well so you talked about it's as if I'm saying paranormal magic is real it's just not paranormal yes so yeah that was a good angle to come with because when you say when you were originally saying real magic isn't real but fake magic is real yeah if you take that analogy and you apply it correctly in my opinion to free will and the situation historically and as it is right now you're not saying magic is real magic is fake the fake magic is real you are saying the paranormal magic is real paranormal magic is fake but fake paranormal magic is real I used the word disingenuous then I just wanted apologize for that I've realized subsequently but the word disingenuous means something slightly different here than what it does us I've had worse accusations in the 20 minutes preceding the show so of course I'm a British I have to be apologetic yeah not so much as you know I think there's a slight problem with the analogy and that what what I'm saying and put it in to the actual turns is that freewill as people have traditionally viewed it is not free in the sense that they have traditionally viewed it but is still free in another sense the attributes that some people have value about free will I'm definitely not going to be saying most ever again because that was a stick they're not free in the sense that they previously thought they're not free from all constraints they're not free from causality and determinism but they're still valuing recognizing that they the the occasions where they are and are not free from constraints by other agents so if you tie me to a chair you are taking an action that prevents me from doing the thing that I want to do there's a if you if I pick up a gun and shoot you or if somebody puts a gun in my hand and aims it at you and has me pull the trigger more if somebody puts me in a scenario whether it's you know I have to choose between shooting you or shooting for children those scenarios are mildly different with respect to how my will is being infringed or impeded and yet in all the action in all the instances I'm pretty much the agent taking action yeah so the there was a Sicily analogy that you brought up from Sam and I have them I have a massive problem with it which I will let you rip apart so that it's not a problem at all sure just just before you jump on it to go to your analogy with the gun we could either say the Matt shot Steve according to his own free will and it was unencumbered there was no extortion or no coercion he just did it or we can say the Matt consciously chose to shoot Steve so he did it according to his free will but under the duress of someone having a gun to him the point being is that it's still your conscious action is still free will but there's extortion on there so one of the best arguments have actually seen for still calling it free is you could say the will is what you do consciously deliberately and free will is how you would define err if there's no extortion no coercion so she wanted to come back add that in you make a distinction between will and desire will and desire I guess I guess will has more to do with action in the sense that you can desire something whereas a will to be fair I'm I'm open to see in the words however they want to be defined I just I don't want certain terms or words to be redefined when they absolutely mean something else at the present and it's not just because it's not very definition it's because dissolution etcetera I I'm pretty much in agreement I was asking us for clarity because there are times when I have had well and desire in my head has the same thing and free will being relating to impositions on my ability to achieve or work to achieve those desires if instead we're looking at will and desire as desire is what you want and will is what you do on behalf of what you want then it may be that we've kind of shifted things or that we're talking about in you go desire to will and I had desire and will was co-equal so it was will and free will or whether or not your wills impeded I don't know if that's completely lack knows that I mean clarifying yeah I know he's definitely worth clarifying the words of course that we want to use I think ultimately as you were saying earlier what people want to use for words to describe certain and beliefs or certain things I don't really mind it just it can confuse situations and it can not lead to the result as effectively as using other words for example a lot of people have said to me an atheist is somebody who claims to know that no gods exist and at first I used to respond to that going that's not what it is and now that I've got a bit more of a nuanced opinion on the matter I now say if you want to define atheism that way fine but then I'm not an atheist and I don't think anyone basically is because no one really I mean is it it's an absurd position in that sense claim to be but they're absurd exactly so you get that well the same is with in that sense so yeah yeah it says I think this is gonna come down to there's a context in which I think there's some value mm-hmm and and not just like I know that Sam's point out that Dan is Dennett is somewhat worried about what happens if people become convinced that they don't have free will and so he wanted to maintain the I don't want to maintain the word for that I think there's a context in which free is a relatively reasonable descriptor even if it's not accurately mapped to the previous understanding so it's just gonna say that when it comes to denna I can see why he wants to keep the word and it's because as you were just saying he sees valuing and he thinks that you know bad things essentially gonna happen if we lose that word and it's worth keeping and he's referenced studies etc about how people act when they believe they have free will and how they don't in other situations I find those studies to be flawed and I will in the future produce a video on why I think that's the case but I understand him making a case an argument for it but if you don't seem to care about the words then surely just choosing the word that's better in the current context is just the best choice to make if you say the word will then everybody really gets what you're saying it only takes a little little bit on top to say this is what I mean by will whereas when you say free will it's just the case that everybody seems to have a different definition so I've got an analogy that I brewed up earlier on and so it's incomplete but if I can run it past you I think it will conveyed sadly where I'm coming from and maybe you let me let me jump in on that and then do the analogy because I try and fail on occasion but I try to be very specific I don't know if there's an instance of me using the term free will without also describing as precisely as time will allow what I'm talking about I tend to you know these discussions about free will that I have all tend to be surrounded hey let's define libertarian free wills not sense and you know we're going down this road and I'm a compatible estándar den it means it that way or not although I'm massively informed by Dennett's work but I wouldn't ever use free will without a clarification of ID well I don't think that I would ever use free will without a clarification of what my usage is and how it's distinct from one of the people yes I've seen that myself with you talking you have absolutely always clarified that don't you think that's a problem like you don't always have to say that if you used to just say I don't believe in free will I believe in will that almost nothing else really has to be said and certainly not as much as always having to caviar always having to make clear well I kind of do it when I talk about morality to is when I talk about I clarify that I'm talking about well-being and I could say I don't believe there's morality I believe there's well-being except I think the two are tied and similarly I think there's a case so when we talked about the comment from Krauss that I referenced that I thought was brilliant and now I'm not as keen on it because crosses use of nothing is vastly removed from the philosophical ex Nilo and stuff and so it's probably the bridge too far but when I'm describing free will I don't think it's as far removed from the traditions surrounding free will it's like saying you don't have free will in the in the sense that you thought you did but you may have another type of will that could be called free which is you know Dennis book was the varieties of free will worth wanting and he goes through and he describes the various ones that says yeah you definitely don't have this this and this but if you care about free will or you care about wanting to keep that notion that you are not being impeded by other agents here's this variety mmm see that reminds me of the analogy with Sicily and Atlantis well it's guess so how about you unpack your issue and you tell me just wanna miss it either you can insert the original statement or you could relive the analogy and then I can tell you what I objected you sure not quite as articulate as mr. Harris but essentially we live in a world where historically and now people believe that the city of Atlantis exists the underwater city and compatible lists are coming up basically we realized that it doesn't it doesn't exist there is no Atlantis now compatible it seemed to be coming along and saying hey yeah actually Atlantis is Sicily and some are replying well it's not it's not underwater and they go no no no no no listen it's um it's got it's got buildings it's got Commerce it's got it's got people it's it's got all you care about and the problem is is that to most people when they say Atlantis they mean that it's underwater so saying here's Sicily and that's what you should care about is I mean I'm doing a butcher job really of Sam Sam's position or analogy here but um it's basically Harris's point is that when it comes to freewill people care about the free but just as when it comes to Atlantis they care about the underwater bit in this analogy where as saying are you it's not in the water but we do have Sicily it's like saying I it's not free but we have will but we're gonna call it free will or it's not underwater and it doesn't fit the description of Atlantis but we're going to call it Atlantis it's it seems insincere in that point and I think that's the point he was trying to get across yeah and and so there's an aspect of this story that that may be entirely wrong in my head but when I think of Atlantis wasn't it originally on the surface and then sank or was it oh I don't know my history off it but I think the point being even if the analogy is is not perfect which I'm sure you could down we'll be right there the point being the central thesis is that people believe that it's underwater it doesn't really matter if used it was if it was up but if that's the case and yeah the analogies I mean it's it's not perfect for other reasons as well that I was yeah what if we were to discover that Sicily was that the description once upon a time there was an Atlantis and it was just a city like any other and there were all kinds of myths and legends built up about it that directed people to oh it's under water and it's in this part of the Mediterranean or wherever and we can't find it and then we found that no what actually happened is there was a city that was referred to by some as Atlantis and after a period of time and Wars it became known as Sicily and that portion of the history was lost if we could then say that Sicily is we would be justified in saying that Sicily is Atlantis it just doesn't have all this supernatural glom on it in that case Sam's right that this is in part what compatibles you're trying to do but it's by using the Atlantis thing I think it adds a level absurdity to it that isn't necessarily accurate because if we look at the concerns people have about you know am I free to make decisions am I being impeded all these other things the fact that you're not able to do it in a contra causal fashion or libertarian fashion it's like stripping away it's like stripping away the legends around King Arthur hmm there wasn't an Excalibur and a Lady of the lake but he was and and I don't know not saying this is true cuz my history on this is awful too that he was a real figure I've seen it I've seen people do it with you know was Paul Bunyan real was arthur real was this real if we could make a case for that but at the end of the day it's silly now and I'm okay we're calling it says but if we had good reason to think that the two were at least tied together I think we'd be disingenuous to say oh that's not Atlantis it's Sicily yeah and what the compatibles are saying it's Sicily but it once upon a time was Atlantis and we've you know so I don't know that it's so much about ad it's a great little kind of dig but I don't know that it it it refutes anything about what compatibles are saying you see it's great I think now I'm think about Atlantis I think the myth does come from actually a Greek city that did experience an earthquake it can go into the water if I remember correct they don't one with Pompeii yeah but I think what you just said it doesn't work for the reason that what matters is what people mean by Atlantis and what they mean is that it's underwater so with that context we can say well it once wasn't underwater and then it was and then we've now got this conception that it was that it is underwater still we even know really capacity to say no it's never been underwater it's actually Sicily but when it comes to free will there isn't a before there wasn't a moment where we didn't have this pervasive illusion it's always been this way we always since we can't soon as we are conscious I was going to say since we're born but we're not it's as soon as the mind gets to a certain development we have this illusion of free will and it doesn't go it doesn't go even when you know it's an illusion so me and you know it's an illusion the traditional sense of free will but we're still experiencing it right now it's still an illusion some people have said we'll know once you know it it's not an illusion but that's not the case assume you agree with me on that case the example I would use is if you bring yeah you know I can look at optical you know I can know exactly that this is the two colors of the aim and I know it's true me and you know I will always see them as different in that context yes exactly and that's the same with freewill but this Sicily analogy and the objection against compatibilism seems to me like saying ah yes we we know that these two things aren't the same but we want to tell people that they're wrong to see them as the same when in fact it's unavoidable that they see the illusion of what they view as freewill has free will yeah and the clarification would seem to be for me yes what you're experiencing is an illusion you definitely see these two colors same you definitely think that you have this old version of free will but here's the actual fact and there's nothing wrong and there may be some value and people understanding that it's okay to see both of the colors as the same while simultaneously knowing that they are different so if we run with the paper and it's moving that's how we perceive it and that's how people have perceived free will the illusion is happening that we have free will and the paper is moving if people were saying to you the paper is moving that and you were saying no no it's not what you actually care about is the you see it is moving even though it's not and then you were telling you and the world at large was basically expressing that no what they actually care about what they're building policies on what religion basically is found founded on is that that's moving it wouldn't it be better to just say listen I'm not going to redefine the word moving or redefine the word illusion I'm just going to say to you it isn't moving but here's some other things to consider because that's what I do with free will Wesley listen you haven't got free will but you do have will this might be a good time for me to give you an analogy that I was going to give earlier because it just shines a bit more context on this this isn't perfect but it's just to illustrate what I see compatible is doing with the word so imagine if you had a friend come up to you and say hey Matt I've just inherited 100 million dollars but I can't have it for two years that's just the nature of the wheel and then you go away and you do some research and you look into it and you find out that he hasn't got 100 million dollars he's actually got 1 million dollars there's a multitude of things that you can then do but there seems to be three that are prominent one is that you just don't say anything at all and in two years he finds out that he hasn't got a hundred million dollars he's only got 1 million I made that sound bad but that's still pretty good but - and this is what I feel like Harris is doing and myself you can go hey mate come over beer I need to talk to you and then you can say listen you don't have a hundred million dollars but you do have one million dollars and let me tell you why that's all that matters because you can protect your family you can have a house over yourself you've got the shelter you don't need that part you don't have it though I'm not gonna tell you that you have it you don't need it this is what you need this is what you I'm telling you this is although you think you care about that that's this is why you care about it where is the third option and this is where I see compatibilism coming in its going hey Maine you do have $100,000,000 I've just checked it but we have to redefine the word earthy we have to redefine dollar we have to redefine that value of money it just seems to be deliberately avoiding the fact that it's not what he thinks it is there's not analogous it at all or well I think I think there's a slight problem but first of all thanks for doing the conversion to dollars so that I didn't have to do that in my head welcome but I think that what's happening here in objecting to compatibles is it's like oh it's a hundred million dollars versus 1 million dollars and so you're focusing on the quantity which is which is the various properties and in both cases what's fair to say is that you're getting free money you're just not getting the free money that you thought you were yeah and I think what compatibles they're saying is somebody saying I'm getting free money and it's and it's a hundred million dollars and compatibles is saying you're getting free money it's 1 million dollars I see so just to clarify in that analogy and you've just Illustrated it's definitely not perfect what the person cares about is the money and you're illustrating to him when you're coming into the conversation saying you don't actually care about the money you care about what the money gives you and what the money gives you is shelter for your family etc like a happy life or when it comes to free will you're walking go and you can say listen free will doesn't exist but the reason you care about free will is because you care about moral culpability you care about people actually being responsible and treated responsible for their decisions so you are detaching them and I think the best way to detach that is by saying listen free will doesn't exist but you do have will and you get to retain all of the value that you care about but you're focusing on the wrong thing the free bit doesn't matter this matters and we agree on that we both are trying to get that point across it just seems that you're getting it across by saying no you do have free will but we must redefine free will in a world in a context in the conversation that's happening where basically everybody means what every what most people mean I should say by free will and fervently is completely against the way you're trying to redefine it it's like a massive uphill battle or you just use the word will and if you have also to layer on top of that lots of religious people who need free will free wheels the only thing I can see that's more important to most religions than creationism so evolution was a massive sledgehammer to their beliefs because it ruins their creation stories and that's where you have massive dislike for well not having free will buries a and the fact and the thing is we know we don't not in that sense it's not in a sense that they need it so I think we will be doing a greater service to irreligion to breaking down religion by making the point that actually you really don't have free will it just seems to it just seems to be as we were saying at beginning it's only about terms we agree and we want the same thing it's just we just we disagree with the right terms to use and how to get there but am i put a lot on the table what what so it's fine so now we're essentially because we've decided that we agree on what we have and perhaps disagree on whether or not there's justification about what to call it now we're talking about the strategy behind that decision which I get I think that one of the biggest problems is I don't necessarily want to lump you in but I will say Chris you and I have spent a great deal of time thinking about free will and all the issues surrounding it and we've also studied what various philosophers have said and so the context in which we're looking at this is not the context that the average person as a matter of fact I would bet that apart from just regurgitating something they've heard in the sermon no member of my extended family has ever uttered the words free will or cared about the language surrounding free will apart from God gives you free will and and what they really mean is God allows you to make decisions and you're gonna pay you're gonna suffer the consequences for those decisions which is true whether we're me puppets or not and so this may be some of it an intellectual exercise that doesn't resonate with the everyman which is probably my target audience because when I come up against I sat down with a Calvinist one time for lunch and they don't believe in free will and we had a great lunch and a great discussion and in Calvinists have probably thought more about free will because it's it's much more a rigid structure within their theology then you know Southern Baptists or anybody else for sure and I said well if you don't think you have free will why are you out you know proselytizing to people and he looked me in the eye he says I don't have any choice yeah and so he yeah they have this this view of will that is even more rigid and more constrained they are not just meat puppets with self reflection they are God puppets that essentially don't make any decisions God just directs their life and you know it's it's bizarre but for others that come to me that say oh well you know God gives you free will I would tend to in conversation say okay what do you mean by that because if you're talking about if by free will you mean this we know that that's not the case you know if there's a bunch of stuff we don't know but we can be pretty confident that the type of free will you're talking about doesn't exist and then like I can go on to clarify it I don't tend to say oh you do have free will it's just not the one you want nice what I do is it's going to say you don't have the free will you want but you have this and there may be a justification for calling that free will as well hmm yeah so you hit a great point on who you're communicating with so if you're communicating with a tight circle of people that are interested in a certain subject then you can define your terms so I could define God to mean energy and there's nothing wrong with that if the people I'm talking to know what I'm talking about but when when people are saying that free will doesn't exist they are communicating to more than just that circle they're also they're competing to they're talking to competing circles interested in the same subject and they're also talking to the masses at large when you're having those conversations I've had plenty of conversations with theists about determine as well about free will and I've at first I used to be a compatible list at first I used to use no you do have free will but it's like this and then after being called basically disingenuous enough times eirick I came to the opinion that he isn't sincere it's better to just say that listen you don't have free will but you do have will and that's what matters B is a great point that you raise about where you'll have in that conversation because then you can tie into things such as evolution it's called a theory well that's only in the discourse of scientists but when you talk to normal people normal people as opposed to scientists do you say to them are evolutions a theory or do you always have to follow that up with but this is what a theory means or do you just say no for all intent and purposes colloquially the evolution is a fact it's only a theory if they want to go down that road and you then you can explain what a theory is according to that language so I'm generally so anal and terrified of being misrepresented that on that front I would say evolution is a fact the theory of evolution by natural selection is the scientific theory that explains that but I think there was a point you made about this so you noted that we can we can use language it's our tool and so if somebody says by God I mean entered now we can have a conversation assuming you and I both create here's the thing you then followed it up by saying that it's better to just say free will doesn't exist and the problem with that is you are lumping all connotations of freewill under one banner and saying it's not real it's there's a difference between saying how many are that it would be like saying we need to say God doesn't exist and then when somebody comes along and says oh my god I mean energy and then you have to go oh well of course energy exists so it's about a precision in what we're actually to know okay so let's let's run with those terms you have got and you're completely right I've met more every person I mean that believes in a God has a different God - the person I've just met in at least in the sense of what whether or not they care about who I sleep with and in what position etc but also and it did in Iraq there's a difference between saying God doesn't exist and what I tend to do would just point out there is no good reason to think that a god it does exist because that was more include accepting of evidence that actually comes brilliantly down to language because when some if you want to be specific you say there's no evidence for a God well there's certainly not compelling so therefore I don't believe in it but when someone says there is no God they mean that it's just that's how you speak when you're not being sensitive to your words and as you pointed out many many times I think it's a brilliant point that you've made or if you want to convince someone what matters is that you're communicating it doesn't matter about the words that are being used etc but just before that where where was I slightly lost myself anyway continue yes I think I continue and you were just saying about okay we had God and there is a multitude of definitions there really is like I said there's probably more definitions really than there is well as many as there are believers in God but when it comes to free will how many definitions are there because from what I can see it there's really just one apart from the new same it's not new the compatibilist one that's covered in am i wrong there is there just one or is there loads of different definitions art no one there's just one yeah yeah - at least - okay among philosophers there's probably a parade of different models that allow the varieties of freedom within will which is why you know then I mentioned dense but before the varieties of free will worth wanting now a fantastic point I should deduct I should rephrase that there's lots of popular definitions of God say I could offer enough so you have lots of different definitions of gods that are quite popular you know Hindu gods different variations of the Abrahamic God through Islam through Christianity Catholicism etc when it comes to popular frequently used definitions of freewill there doesn't seem to be so many but you are completely right there is lots of definitions really if you're gonna count them and the other thing is if we're talking from a standpoint and I'm not remotely claiming that I'm right or that I have the best strategy I'll get emails about the show about I can't stand to watch the show when you're on because you're an arrogant ass who talks down to people or whatever and then I'll get another email from somebody else about the exact same call saying wow I almost believe in God because you have the patience of a saint and caution people about is asserting something that adopts a burden of proof that you may not be able to meet so for the mythos crowd I think they're overextending if they say that they can reasonably conclude Jesus didn't exist rather than saying wow there is no reason to conclude Jesus actually existed and this alone is a huge problem for Christianity if you say God doesn't exist you've now adopted a burden of proof and if it turns out that the specific God or category of gods that you were talking about doesn't exist but differs from the person you've made no headway whereas if you begin with there's no reason to believe that a God exists or maybe on the freewill subject there's no reason to believe that the traditional notions of freewill are in any way real I'm fine with that because I haven't adopted any you know I'm willing to be shown if you have an argument and evidence for a traditional freewill or whatever your version is I'm willing to accept it and if it turns out your version isn't traditional I still have I'm still not wrong there wasn't I haven't been presented evidence for the traditional model but you have the compatibilist model which I'm willing to accept if if this is all about strategy then I have to go back to the likelihood that there are probably as many right approaches as there are people who have views on this because I can say something to someone and it will have no impact is that because there's a personality conflict is that because there was a language issue some some thing that wasn't properly defined what I suspect happens more often than not is the example I've uses is the three on a mattress bad luck thing it's it's an old war analogy if you're in the trenches the first guy lights a cigarette nothing happens the second guy lights a cigarette nothing happens then the third guy lights a cigarette and gets his head blown off because across the field the first guy lit his cigarette and the sniper said wow what was that and the second guy lit his cigarette and he's like oh that's what it is and the third guy lights it and he gets shot I think when people are first presented with an idea that's foreign to them that there's a likelihood God didn't exist or that they don't have free will or anything else it's just weird and it gets dismissed because it's too foreign to the models in their head and the second time it's hey I've heard this before maybe there's something here and the third time is when we have a pattern and as pattern recognition machines that it may be the case that it has nothing to do with me saying it to them didn't have an effect it might have been the first time and it might you know who knows you you could come along and say the exact thing that I said the next day and they could go well duh you know of course I should have known and so if this is about the strategy in much the same way that I have no objections to somebody calling it will and I have no objections to people saying libertarian free will is nonsense or the varieties of Christian free will or theistic free will clearly don't have any correlate in reality and in fact when I talk to believers on the rare occasions that free will comes up and it's pretty rare my favorite thing is if it's trying to a Christian they'll probably use it in the sense of God won't reveal himself to you because this would violate your free will because everybody would be compelled to believe in a God if he would reveal himself and he wants you to freely choose this my response is okay do you believe in Satan and as long as they say yes they now have to acknowledge that they're they believe that there's a being who's been in God's presence who knows God's power who God has clearly revealed himself to and yet chose to rebel hmm and if Satan can do that then we have to be able to do it especially if they're gonna argue that Satan is here to guide us to make that decision so their use of free will even if it were real hmm fails and so I'd much rather have that argument the only time I have freewill arguments about compatibilism is I didn't even have this argument with with with the Calvinists it's with other atheists other philosophy geeks we should just call it will we bring up sorry I just want to jump in there you you brought in a brought in a good point at the end they're saying that it's atheists that bring it up I think this is partly a reason for that this debate is partly about strategy it's not mainly it's about language and about what's best to use but there is a part that's about strategy in the u.s. you have you actually you have this in the UK as well to use atheism as an app as an analogy you have lots of people who don't believe in a God but they go on to different terms so you have atheism agnosticism irreligious you have people that just go for Jedi and giant spaghetti monster etc and the voices are just killed because there's no you whereas if they were put into one which they could you can do if you just say look this is the definition they do all fit it then there's a lot more weight and are not a lot more power behind that it's a similar thing with free will and determinist like me I can tell you now that the reason why I made the video the reason why I want this conversation and maybe it's the reason why the backlash you get is from atheists it's because you're on my side it's just it's just because of the words that you're using you don't look like you are to anyone that's not paying attention and most people are not paying attention it's there and I think I think that is a big problem with this and people get to define their own terms when they identify by a label of course and then you see religious people going again to the analogy lots of Christians will say you know I'm a Christian it's really high rated and they're very well categorized and yet we're not as a religious people and we're not when it comes to to the illusion of free will and it's almost entirely because because of this redefinition of free will when the word wheel is perfectly suffice and it can it gets the message across in my opinion more clearly so to go back round in the loop kind of thing it is a very interesting debate or discussion that we're having because it's so weird to be having the exact same position as somebody else it just been about words ya know that's that's the thing that's probably I mean granted both in the video and here you said a number of things that I completely agree with and but this one resonates the most because I have constantly talked about how much I hate bad arguments and strategies but I hate them most when they're coming from the people who ostensibly are on my side of an issue or what I think is the right side of an issue whether it's you know the Nazi punching arguments or the let's make really bad arguments against Christians or theists or let's portray theists as stupid or you know I had a guy write the other day to talk about you know in his view the average IQ of the person who calls our show is about 85 and how we should be kindly and gentler to them and I I wrote back and I was like wow you you're so arrogant I have no idea how to respond to you you basically and and explicitly referred to them as mentally handicapped as if they have one arm etc say all this you're wanting me to be kind learn gentler when I'd rather just speak truthfully and presume that the person as a default that the person is capable of changing their mind and understanding reason and then only concluding that they can't when I actually have evidence for that but instead you know you think you're the IQ whisperer and can determine as if that was relevant cuz I know people who have probably an 85 IQ who understand at least the topic we're talking about me and the gentleman in the email far better than you do so what's my IQ jackass you know you're so good at this and and because I've talked about this idea of bad arguments tragic and completely see where you're coming from it's just that I would agree that it's bad strategy to run around saying yes we have free will yes we have free will yes we have free will it just means this which I don't think is anything that I've ever done and I was always talking about when I tend to talk about this it's we don't have these things these varieties of free will but I think there's something that we have okay so no sorry to interrupt but you you wording it that way it's still the same message is it not is it to say that the free will you think you have don't it I think I think it can be construed that way so if you come up to somebody who believes in free will and when you say so what was the words you use I don't wanna be put words in your mouth I don't know which word you're referencing the words you just use when you come into contact with someone who does believe in free will as the libertarian sense and you say you don't have the free will do you think you have but you have you have something that I think reasonably be called free will and then you describe it that's like saying you didn't get free money that you thought you got but you did get something that counts us for your money and here's what it is but but at the end of the day you are telling them you didn't get the money that you think you've got correct yeah and if they if they are caring more about the the number of the money rather than what they can do with a smaller amount of money yeah he's still the same message it's just because it could I agree with the essential point it's so it's if I find out that that's what they care about yeah then that's what we focus on you know it is just false that you got 100 million dollars similarly when we talk about morality Sam and I've used well-being and at the end of the day if I've had many arguments with people who say that's not morality what morality is this and only this and my response to them is to say fine then I don't give a rat's ass about morality I care about well-being do you and it turns out that we can now have a conversation where they agree you know so it's it's a stage progression I I'm not I think the big issue is that I'm not convinced if there are people who are afraid legitimately afraid of the prospect that they don't have free will in any sense that they are being whipped around by the winds and you know can't even be a self-reflective acting agent then letting them know that they in fact are a self reflecting acting agent as far as we can tell and that they have a will which is either freak from constraints of others or not may be viewing free will more like free speech of specifically talking about the limits on it um that conversation can be had and if I running it up against somebody who says no free will is this and only this then I am as quick as anybody to say yeah that's not real yeah so I'm I think I think the concern is that when I see what I see Sam doing even in the conversation we had is roughly the equivalent of that of saying no you don't have free will in any sense and what the compatibilist are saying that you have is free will isn't free according to the standard so it does it shouldn't count as free as all at all so okay so if you look at what was really being said before compatibilism and I understand it's quite far back but if you're looking at that free will meant one thing really I don't want to fall into that trap again but you know what I'm saying it's it's you are more autonomous in that sense that's what Harris is getting at so you're writing to say what you just said because he's saying you don't have free will period but that's because he's doing it almost as an opposition to someone else coming in and saying you do have free will but it's not free will which is where it's coming into that trap of saying you real paranormal magic is fake but fake paranormal magic is real so I mean if you that is a bit of a fallacious appeal to tradition but it gets to the last note I had about your video were you and I and I'll let you clarify this but you said it's not okay to redefine a word but it is okay to make a new definition and label the old one nonsense or archaic but creating a new definition and labeling the old one nonsense archaic is redefining the word it just doesn't happen instantaneously it's a process and I think what compatible lists are trying to do is say yes everything that people have normatively traditionally viewed as free will is garbage but there is a context in which this concept which has value is still free in a context and what we can do is add this as another variety of free will phase out the old until this becomes the new standard then it may be doing it to avoid you know potential disasters around it but I think there's value in doing that but I'm not necessary you know I've said this I'm not necessarily tied to it I think that there's a number of different ways to go about this but when you say redefining a word isn't okay but it's okay to add a new definition and label the old one archaic how is that not redefining a word okay so several things that you were saying there and I've within this conversation I've realized more of the differences between you and and denna I don't really actually see that many problems with your approach no no no I I think your positions more defensible than his even though of course much of what you say is his it's because if the layer that he posed on top and that actually it's better to keep the illusion because of certain arguments that he's referenced I think that the approach that you take that works where you can redefine the word in that sense it there's nothing wrong with it but if when you apply that to the context of the conversation that's currently happening happening I think the better way to achieve the goal that we both want that both the the statements that we're both saying is to just use the word will because it's an easier path to do so there's no you cannot gonna have to caveat all the time there's the certain walls that you're not going to hit as for what I was saying about redefining words I actually listen to that back myself and I was a bit clumsy in the words that I used what I was getting at is I don't think it's fair for Lawrence to go around he doesn't do it as much so much now but I've seen it on other panels saying no no the universe came from nothing and then only 45 minutes later really revealing what he means by nothing and it's because he's just redefined the word in that sense it represents the confusion that you get with calling freewill freewill but if you start off very explicitly which I can tell that you you do by saying almost immediately this isn't what I mean by free will this is what I mean by free will then then it's fine but it's not fine when it's done in the in the way the approach that I've seen Lawrence do it it actually reminds me a little bit of how Peterson does it with the word truth in some areas he just doesn't reveal what he means by truth explicitly and up from and to a large extent that's why he gets a lot of attention because people don't pay enough attention to actually listen to the way he's actually using it later on so as a response to what you were saying I think it is fine to redefine free will the way that that you want to it's just I think the approach of calling it will was different and I don't know if we're gonna get much past that apart from criticizing each other's analogies yeah I completely agree and this was one of the things when when cross said it when we were on stage that he uses nothing at a different context and and I pointed out Sam and I would use well-being for morality and so I think the three are a little different I think that well-being as you pointed out in the video is a clear core aspect of everything morality has traditionally been even if people have glommed other things on to it I think that the free portion of free will as a compatibles would do it is not as clearly justified as the connection between well-being and morality and may be problematic but I don't think either of those are nearly as problematic as Lawrence's redefinition of nothing because it's it's coming from almost nowhere it's kind of blinds you at least when I talk about the types of free will that I would perhaps justify as being free I'm providing context when it comes to nothing he's giving you the characteristics of nothing which automatically makes it something under so that's a bigger problem yes a traditional free will isn't real or believable but you still have will and whether or not you find a compatible way to include the free modifier doesn't matter that much to me is there a problem with that there isn't a problem of that but you go under the banner of compatibilist of a compatible list and that's the way people don't interpret the broader field of of compatibilism as that whereas I think they would if you were if you're laughing so tell me Claire I trip I just didn't want her up so what if I were to say traditional compatibilism is wrong and whether or not you find a way doing yeah you could do the same thing forever it'd be you know in Turtles all the way I'm definitely I'm only compatible it's in the sense that I agree with tenets foundations of what he portrayed is compatible I find that there may be some good reasons to include some free class modifier even though it doesn't match up with the traditional one and it may be as I pointed out closer to like free speech than it is to free from constraints I don't I I don't have to identify myself as a compatibilist at all as a matter of fact they don't find the term particularly useful because in most of the conversations around freewill if I say I'm a compatible it's the only people who have any understanding of that are compatible as' or people who spent a lot of time doing it even in Sam's book on free will where he basically says I don't understand compatibilism it seems like they're just defining it and Dennett has said that Sam is a compatible list he just doesn't know it yeah and if that's the case then it may be of all the words we've discussed being problematic today the compatible astiz the true problem more than free that in a hot minute because I don't I if the goal is to communicate what is and isn't or what is reasonable to believe I'll drop any word you know like I have no idea what what spirituality means I despise that word began so it's very frustrating Sam and I talked about this after the Chicago that where he had talked about losing the sense of self and I was like I even if you could do that I don't know why it's a good thing you know if it's the source of pain and suffering it's also the source of joy isn't it why would you but he talked about his own frustration with using the word spiritual or spirituality for the same reasons I object to him it's just that he can't find a better word to kind of describe this and it's welcoming as so hilarious that he can say this 20 minutes after he's gonna criticize Dan for not finding a better better phrase than free yeah so we're kind of they were muddling through this a little bit but yeah I don't care if I ever call my mother no I mean I mean ultimately what you were just saying about Sam Harris and the word spirituality I can't speak for him and hopefully you have another discussion no of course of course of course caveats all the way around but I think what he might say is that people aren't born I don't immediately inherently experience what they something that they would call spirituality and they share the same opinion whereas that is the case with freewill people were born with this illusion it's incredibly powerful and it's only really in the last several centuries that we've realized that it's not the case and it's always going to be the case that people were born with this sensation has traditionally been called freewill and so he just thinks it's better to approach that by not redefining the word but instead by saying it doesn't exist but we can hear now we can now we're open to a real conversation etc but only as the as the overly pedantic debate dude what difference does it make how long someone is held of you what difference it make whether someone has been convinced of something their entire life or for the last 15 years of the life or for the last 20 minutes the the key is that they are convinced of something and it's inaccurate I think it's more the case that it's not it's not about how long they've personally been convinced it's more about we are born and we expose us want to become of an age where we're conscious we experience it in that way so it's not it's not like an appeal to population or appeal to tradition in that sense it's more about the fact that the the default position is that people shared the same illusion and so that's why he would say with the word spirituality it means different things to different people whereas in that sense that elite way you called it that experience seems to be inherent with anyone that has basically consciousness but again I can't speak for him you'll be better off having that conversation with him yeah and and there are more conversations okay I'm hoping to have a conversation with Dennett at some point yeah his schedule hasn't allowed it but it's it's on the list so one thing happened that was curious one relatively significant individual gave a talk about compatibilism that was a complete thrashing of compatibilism that I felt misrepresented both my own thoughts and tenets as a way of kind of dismissing this and after it was over I found myself this is awful in a four or five Way discussion as the lone compatibilist with the individual gave the talk and several other phd's multi PhD blah blah blah in various disciplines only one of them in philosophy and I'm the lone guy going after this and one thing that came up from several of them is that they deny that we are even agents their view of our lack of free will means that they will not acknowledge that we are agents that we have agency what would that go down to how they define agency because I define it in the same way as you which is just means exactly but I can understand a lot of people will say well that's because they see agency with what is implicitly necessary with that is a free will they would say the agency doesn't exist it might just be a language thing going on yeah the language thing but here's the thing so they've become convinced that we don't have free will in any sense and then once they check out the idea of free will they check out the agency so now they're essentially the rough equivalent of the hardline Calvinists only as atheists now I'm with Sam that I would like see a better understanding of the human brain and where we can make determinations about agents motivations and what we can and can't correct for remove the tumor give them a drug whatever so that we get away from a vengeance and retribution model of justice although I do still think that you know if I kill you and I have a tumor where the tumor I'm clearly no longer a danger so you know yeah we shouldn't be locking me up maybe at all or perhaps not forever but there may still be some benefit to society to say even though you are no longer this danger there still needs to be some compensation for the action you took just as if you broke my window you're still gonna have to pay for it whether it was a tumor or yeah yeah Sam Harris actually said we would put earthquakes in prison if we could it doesn't matter if they're an agent in that sense what matters is that we want to prevent bad things happening and allowing for good things with the people that were you not we're rejecting agency however it was defined what I found as many people mean you were in a minority in the sense that we believe that morality is objective and if you have somebody that doesn't believe in free will and as a moral relativist right then it removes the motives a bit so you it doesn't matter about having free will because you have the motives behind you because you see that well-being is the answer in your case it's human wellbeing and said that plays into the agency part I say but it's uh yeah now that was kind of a side note because I think unless I'm much mistaken about what just happened I think we started off almost entirely in agreement and ended almost entirely in agreement including I would drop compatible estándar always include clarification and I have no problem with also referring it to it as will but I don't know if I'm going to immediately I worry that there's an impact of saying you don't have free will you just have will that is an effort from the impact of saying you don't have the free will you think you do you have will it may or may not be free depending it you know to show that there's there subtlety's afterwards in much the same way that i is that the same present different package or because it does matter the way things are presented is that what you're saying there yeah it's for people who think that without a god the world will descend into chaos starting off with there is no god which is already a mistake of adopting a bird of proof that I don't think is real but starting off trying to convince them that they don't have a good reason to believe there's a God may not be the best course of action but for somebody else it absolutely could be and the the prime example that I've used I hope hope I don't ruin anybody's Christmas um Santa Claus there are people who give up their belief in Santa Claus just without any product maybe they never accepted it whatever there are others who do a little investigating find the presents hidden in the closet you know watch for mom and dad and stay up later and all this other stuff and then there are some people who don't give it up until they're made fun of on the bus to school of oh you still believe in Santa Claus you're a little kid and I don't think we should ever start with the third one but I and and I certainly don't think ridicule should be aimed at the people but I'm I'm fine with ridicule being aimed at ideas but even as often as I'm prone to ridiculing ideas I don't think I ever would justify starting there and so when it's a strategy I'm trying to figure out what does this person believe in why what what is their attachment to this freewill idea because if they have this really narrow thing I'm fine with saying yeah that's not real not only do we not have good reason to believe it exists but here's reasons why we can be fairly confident it doesn't but if I'm talking with someone who's latched on to this notion of free will mainly because they're fearful of what does this say about them if they don't have the free will they've always had then I think there's a benefit to saying you might have a variety of free will with or without the free label that satisfies all the things that you're concerned about so I think let's not take shortcuts essentially the approach of seeing what people believe and then going from there is something that we both agree on and you might you mean there might be a point to be said about the strategy of demonstrating to people that they don't have that free will but when you ask them what do you mean by free will they leave of our answer with it's the free part which is the equivalent of saying it's the underwater Atlantis path or they'll answer with it's the moral agency which will be it's the fact that it's a city and we can we can address that accordingly if most people were saying it doesn't even most people with if the individual was speaking to saying that that's the bit that matters or that's a bit they're concerned about then you can say the Atlantis exists but it's Sicily but if what they're concerned about is the free part then you I think it's better to say that the that that doesn't that doesn't exist essentially so I've just seen your comment that oh god this is like a night and I think you're exactly right which is why one of the first things that I wanted to acknowledge is that when I talked about what most people think of when they think of free will that was completely unjustified and inaccurate on my part and wholly retracted it began with my own I mean it was injected with massive amounts of bias for me of once we get rid of libertarian Freegal what else is there to care about and yeah and so that's that's retracted and by the way for the people who watch this and go back and watch TV another video and the reference is there if there's something we didn't address you're probably safe and assuming that I've already conceded that point unless it directly conflicts something here but I don't know okay we're largely on the same page even more than we were before awesome no that's cool lost a lost thing I wanted to ask you essentially is my point on morality where you were saying that Matt the sound was redefined in morality and I was saying he wasn't it's always been about concerns about right and wrong he's just saying that it's not a more weeded it's actually got to do with well-being do do do did you accept that criticism or is that one that you you don't accept no no III accept that which is why when I clarified that thing that I think Sam's morality and well-being which is also mine is a much more justified not necessarily read its it may be so justified that does the encounters a redefinition but there are people who will view it as a redefinition that one's more justified and the free and free will which is more justified than Lawrence Krauss is redefinition of nothing it is that so yeah just one time to clarify so you do think that Sam is redefining morality was that I kind of blanked a little bit I'm sorry about that I think there are people who have a view of morality that don't give a rat's ass about well-being and from those people's perspective Sam's redefining it I just think that even if it were to be enough of a change to be called a redefinition it is entirely justified and if you could talk to those people the only people who are going to object are the ones that are just going straight to like divine command morality is what God says no matter what whether it's in our best interest or not and I'd like to think although I don't have data that that is a vanishing segment even of you know the theistic community so I'm not I'm not so much convinced that Sam has redefined it I can understand the people who think he has but when I'm when I've been challenged that we're redefining it my answer is fine let's get rid of morality if the words getting in the way do you care about well-being because that's what I'm talking about and then if you can get agreement then you can maybe make the case for why they should consider this morality or at a minimum Chuck out the morality label together and say wow I not only care about well-being in the model that you've described I care about that more than I care about the thing that I used to refer to as morality essentially if God's not a humanist scrum yeah just as no irony I've just noticed is when it comes to morality we're kind of on the different sides of the page and like I'm the compatibilist when it comes to this because I'm saying that no more has always been defined about what's what's good and what's bad and that is the underwater bit that people are concerned about and that exists whereas you can just go no it doesn't exist at all but here's how you can angle it the difference is it's always been about what's good and what's bad but Sam saying the foundation for what's good and what's bad is well being yeah and people are saying what's the foundation of what's good and what's bad is about what God says irrespective of our well-being and that okay real thing have to deal with because that you may not be the biggest chunk of theist but it's a good chunk of Evangelicals and at the end of the day you know I grew up as a Southern Baptist hey you just got to take it on faith that God has your best interest at heart but even if he doesn't too bad he's God ya know well well on that note because thanks for answering that question I don't want to take you any longer thanks for making the time to have this conversation it did it's been wonderful speaking with you it's a I was true would hope we can do it again on another topic sister whatever you just said my my computer sites lightly lagged but I was just saying I would I would hope that we could do it again on other topics at some point this was very enjoyable yeah absolutely absolutely well I won't take you any longer and so I shall stop the broadcast thank you for everybody listening and yeah nothing else to say really you

Channel: Rationality Rules

Views: 189,411

Rating: 4.9230771 out of 5

Keywords: matt dillahunty, dillahunty, dillahunty debate, matt dillahunty debate, free will debate, compatibilism, compatibilism debate, sam harris free will, daniel dennet free will, rationality rules

Id: lnQ5Eg_PDsU

Length: 77min 12sec (4632 seconds)

Published: Mon Mar 12 2018

Reddit Comments

[u/RatsuMacKinnon]

Harris is mentioned a lot as well as the semantic strategies of the discussion of free will.

I think it helped me get on board with Woodford seeing as he had a good discussion with Dillahunty live, never thinking he would get the chance but pulling it off when the opportunity came. He seems young and inexperienced but at the same time trained, good communication, all the while being especially relatable to a younger audience, that’s awesome as far as I’m concerned.

[u/Amida0616]

I don't really understand the argument for determinism.

They seem to dive into strange scenarios with a guy with a gun pointed at you.

If you have free will. You still have it when someone threatens you with a gun. If you don't have free will, then you don't have it if someone threatens you with a gun.

I don't understand any argument where a guy threatening you with a gun would change if you have free will or not.

[u/darwin1859]

This was very good. I've had the general feeling over the last decade that atheism is aging, in that I see mostly the same people arguing for atheism as I did 10+ years ago. And some people, like Dawkins and Dennett, have all but disappeared due either to age or disinterest. It's refreshing to see a younger, level-headed person like Stephen Woodward enter the scene. I think people like him will be important for keeping younger people involved in the discussion, and not having an aversion to it because they view the most vocal proponents of atheism to be "old farts."

I hope we keep seeing Woodford, because his calm demeanor and clear thinking is valuable. These traits are what I most value in Harris, and it's refreshing to see these traits reflected in a much younger spokesman.

This was also a productive conversation, as Woodford appears to convince Matt that the term "compatibilist" or "compatibilism" may be doing more harm than good. This was a big concession on Matt's part, and I am happy that he conceded that point. I have always loved Matt, and his influence on me via The Atheist Experience can't be overstated. He's got a hot head sometimes, which is one trait I think works against him sometimes, but his reasoning and communication/debating skills have always been razor sharp. I have always parted ways with Matt regarding Free Will, because I have found Harris' position to be much more convincing and, like Harris and Woodford, thought Matt and Dennett were just missing the point entirely. I never understood why they viewed the existence of other humans possibly restraining another against their will as being somehow relevant in the discussion of Free Will.

It will be interesting to see how Matt approaches future discussions regarding Free Will, and if he indeed will drop the "compatibilist" moniker. This was a productive conversation. Kudos to Stephen here.