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Dec. 22, 2008 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
30:08
1237 Free Will, Determinism And Self Knowledge - Part 4

Response to a listener's excellent criticisms...

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Good afternoon, everybody. It's Steph.
Hope you're doing well. It's 2 p.m.
on the 23rd of December 2008.
Our gorgeous baby is now three.
Count them, three days old.
And absolutely gorgeous.
She is down here with her goddess fertility mama.
And so we may get some additional commentary from the literally peanut gallery.
So, this is from my good friend Peter, who has written, I think, some very interesting and illuminating critiques of what I've been talking about in terms of free will and determinism lately, so I will do my best to address your concerns, Peter, and hopefully this makes some kind of sense.
So, let's start off.
He says, I'm editing a little.
He says, But the logical contradictions in free will are also very challenging, and it saddens me to hear them ridiculed away.
The word nonsense fell a lot.
Yes, it certainly did, and I hope justly, but perhaps not.
Maybe it's all semantics definitions and we are talking about different things, but I cannot make sense of all the contradictions in free will, or at least what I understand that the position of free will means.
The worst argument that keeps coming back is, and this is my argument that he's quoting here, Steph, you say, you don't debate a boulder falling down a cliff because you assume you cannot change its behavior.
You debate with humans because you assume you can change their behavior.
Therefore, if you debate me on free will, you assume free will.
And then Peter goes on to say, when you speak to your computer, which uses speech recognition software, you do this to change your computer's behavior.
Does it mean the computer has free will?
No, I don't think so. You debate with things that are built up.
Auditive sensors to CPU to actuators.
If you generalize, you will try to change the behavior of things that are built.
Sensors to CPU to actuators by giving inputs to its sensors.
So by playing a piano, you will try to change its behavior by pressing the keys, but it does not mean you assume the piano has free will, or at least not in what I think the definition of free will is.
By debating someone, you assume his neural network will search out universal consistent rules and present him or her with inconsistencies.
Which will cause his neural network to adapt.
And that's an interesting argument.
Of course, I don't dictate to my computer as if I am debating with my computer, right?
So I use voice recognition software to dictate my books and I'm obviously not trying to convince my computer that emotional authenticity or anarchy or honesty or ethics I'm not trying to convince my computer of anything.
I'm simply using the computer as a tool in the same way that I would use a pen as a tool.
There's functionally no difference.
Certainly, a pen does not write a book.
A person writes a book. Certainly, speech recognition software does not respond to debates or arguments.
So, I'm not trying to convince my computer.
I'm simply using my computer as a tool.
And I think, if I understand this correctly, and let me know if I don't of course, I think that one of the problems arises because what you're doing is you're using the word behavior in two senses.
And the word behavior is one of these words that is very dense.
It's complicated and has many uses in the English language.
So the word behavior, for instance, we say the behavior of matter.
Matter behaves in a certain way.
But that's not the way that we would use the word, you know, a child is well behaved.
A man behaves well under stress or under difficult situations.
So I think we want to make sure that we use the word behavior In a consistent way.
So when you say, when you speak to a computer, you do this to change your computer's behavior, that's certainly true, but in the same way, if I pick up a rock and I skip it into the ocean, I am changing the behavior of that rock, which formerly was sitting rather inert and now is propelled into a dazzling array of ever-concentric expanding circles of order.
So, I'm changing that rock's behavior, but I am not debating with the rock, and I do not assume the rock has free will.
So I think we want to be careful about that, that we don't use the word behavior in both ways.
So, yeah, naturally, I'm not...
Debating with my computer when I record this podcast, I'm not debating with my computer, I'm debating with you, because my computer doesn't have choice and preference, and I believe that you do.
In the same way, and I was actually thinking of doing this, but I have chalked it up to lack of sleep from a new baby.
I was thinking of doing something rather snarky and shocking, I know.
When you posted, this is something that you posted on the board, when you posted this on the board and you talked about debating with a computer, what I was going to do was I was going to say, well, I assume that you're debating with my server and therefore I will let the server respond.
And clearly that would be an absurd position.
I'm not saying that is your position, but we can understand intuitively that if you were to post something on my server and I were to say...
My server is going to respond to your arguments, and I won't.
But that would be an absurd position, that you are simply using my server as a tool to debate with me.
You are not using me as a tool to debate with my server.
So, that much we understand.
The absurdity of that position, and there's lots of reasons for it, which I've gone into before.
So I won't go into them again, but once we understand that absurdity that you're not debating with my server, but with me, we can understand the qualitative and quantitative differences in the way that we approach computers or pianos versus people.
So, next, you quote an argument of mine where I say, complexity does not add anything.
You don't debate the rainforest, although it is really complex.
Peter says, I must admit, I don't understand how the argument works, but the last time I heard that argument was when you used it to explain free will.
And he quotes me as saying, and I think rightly so, each part of your body is deterministic, but the whole is not.
The parts of a watch cannot tell the time, the whole does.
In other words, complexity can add things, like free will.
The reasons you don't debate with the rainforest is because it is not built up.
Sensors equals CPU equals actuators.
I'm sorry, Peter, I don't understand sensors equals CPU, or sensors leads to CPU leads to actuators.
I assume that it's stimulus-response-input-output argument, but I don't really understand it too well.
And that is an excellent objection.
And let me see if I can do something to explain it and have it hopefully make some kind of sense.
So let me see if I can make this a little more sensible and let me know if it makes any sense.
So yes, atoms, the behavior of atoms is determined and there is no atom that is alive but there certainly are people and animals and other kinds of organisms Yes, complexity can add to life, but not all complexity leads to life.
This is an important thing.
A cow is alive, but A hamburger, to take a gross example, if you put the cow through a blender, you end up with all the bits of a cow, but it certainly is not alive, right?
Christina's making a face.
Are you hungry, sweetie? Hi, Isabelle.
Oh, sleeping peacefully.
Daddy's, quote, working.
Oh, it's going to be hard to explain.
I rail at people on the web, and they send me money.
Yeah, good luck explaining that in the schoolyard, baby.
So... So, complexity is a necessary but not sufficient requirement for life, right?
So, you can throw a whole bunch of proteins and energy together in a vat in the sort of Frankenstein model.
It's alive! But that won't give you life.
Or if it does, it's...
Kind of a miracle, right?
So a lot of complexity is essential, but not all complexity leads to life, and certainly very little complexity leads to what we would call rational consciousness, right? So when determinists say, well, there's lots of variables we don't know, and You know, we're living a life like a movie that we're being handed the lines as we go, and it's the illusion.
So what they're basically saying is that I can debate with a human being because the complexity overwhelms what I can predict or understand.
I can only get general patterns.
I think... But the same is true, of course, of the weather, that we can predict the weather not down to the last detail, but with some degree of accuracy overall.
And the weather is an enormously complex system whose parameters and variables we simply probably will never be able to comprehend in any kind of real-time way.
So that is an example.
If they say that the human mind is exactly like every other complex system, But there's more complex, well, is the individual human mind more complex than the weather or brownie in motion in a Petri dish or whatever?
Well, if determinists say that human consciousness is simply an overly complex but predetermined system, then they have to explain why, if human consciousness is identical in its essence, in its subjection to physical laws, If they say that human consciousness is the same as the weather, then they have to explain why they only debate with human beings and not with the weather.
So, I think that's sort of important.
So, it's certainly, each part of your body is deterministic, but the whole is not the parts of what kind of time...
The whole does.
So yeah, complexity can add to free will.
And we're just working empirically here, right?
We're just working empirically here.
I'm not trying to sort of make out facts here.
The empirical fact is that people only ever debate with people.
People do not debate with their computers.
They do not debate with their pianos.
They do not debate with rocks falling down a hill.
They do not debate with the weather.
So everyone understands and acts on the premise that there is something absolutely and completely unique about human consciousness.
You're debating with me and not my server and not your piano and not your computer.
So you're picking out, out of every single, out of the trillions and trillions of entities that you could debate with in the universe, you are picking out just me.
How special. That's lovely.
But you're picking out just me, so you're saying that, Steph, there's something incredibly unique and different about your consciousness as opposed to everything else.
And then determinists who, and all determinists who debate, act on that premise.
Then they have to explain if there is something completely unique about human consciousness, that we only debate with people, how can human consciousness be fundamentally exactly the same as everything else?
Because that's not how determinists act, right?
They act as if, well, they act on the premise that only people can debate.
If we saw a determinist debating with his piano or his computer, we would assume A kind of mental illness, so we would not assume the consistency with an intellectually respectable position.
I'm not putting you in that category because I know that these are devil's advocate positions, but that's how I would explain that.
Hopefully it makes some sense. Peter also writes, I don't see how the position, deterministic parts can result in an aggregate that is non-deterministic, is fundamentally different from people can't steal and murder and be moral, but their aggregate in the name of the state can.
They both assume aggregates can have opposite properties of their parts.
That's a fantastic, fantastic observation.
You know, sheer genius, good for you, and hopefully I can make some sense of a response.
Let me know, of course. So just to run over the argument, deterministic parts can result in an aggregation that is non-deterministic, right?
So our atoms and our cells do not possess free will, but according to my argument, the A rational consciousness does, right?
So, an aggregation of entities can have properties that are the opposite of those entities.
And I say, well, individuals can't kill, or can't murder morally, but governments...
If somebody said, individuals can't murder, but governments can, how is that different from saying individual atoms don't have free will, but an aggregation of them have free will, which is an opposite property?
Fantastic argument. Let me see if I can...
Make some sense of an objection and let me know what you think.
The difference is, I would argue, that when we look at a crowd of people, we are looking at an aggregation of fundamentally like entities.
I mean, if I put 20 people in a town square and throw in a giraffe and say, look, a crowd of people, somebody would say, and a giraffe, right?
Because there's a non-like entity who is in that group, right?
So, if I say, and if I throw a pile of bricks into a town square and an albatross, right?
That was tied to a brick, let's say.
And I said, look, a pile of bricks, people would say, well, that's a pile of bricks and an albatross, right?
There's one that doesn't It doesn't fit into that category.
The difference is that the human consciousness is an aggregation of an enormous number of dissimilar entities.
At an atomic level we have, I don't know how many of the How many types of atoms we have in our bodies, but it's a huge number of different types.
Obviously the cells are enormously different within our body.
So here we have an aggregation of extraordinarily unlike entities which result in a cohesive whole called a human being.
So that's quite a bit different.
In the same way, to take a mildly macabre example, If I get together a pile of cow livers and throw them in a vat, I don't have a cow. What I have is a mess.
A very gross mess.
Because that's an aggregation of like entities.
So they don't have properties that are the opposite of each entity.
A pile of bricks does not suddenly gain the ability to float and to fly and to reproduce.
If you aggregate like entities together, you don't change their total property.
But if you aggregate unlike entities together, then that is possible if they work in synergy and so on.
That does not apply to aggregations of human beings, which is like a pile of bricks.
It does not gain opposite properties.
A pile of livers is not the same as a cow.
But a bunch of organs and cells and biological processes aggregated together in the form of a cow is a cow, right?
Because they're aggregations of unlike entities.
In the same way if you, again, to use a silly example, if you put a cow through a blender, you are, in a sense, merging, and stir it up, you are merging the cow's disparate cells and organs and so on, Together, which is reducing the separateness of its individual components, and you do not end up with a cow.
You end up with probably the foulest pate on the planet.
So I hope that makes some kind of sense logically.
Then my good friend Peter goes on to say that my position, he says, Steph, you say, I'm an atheist, but I believe in Jesus, God, I go to church, etc.
It's like a joke position. How is that different from, I believe in free will, but I also believe that billiard balls behave deterministically, and so do muscles, nerves, neural cells, and everything behaves deterministically that we put a measuring device on, but I still believe in free will.
Isn't that a joke position as well?
Well, no. I hope not.
Because we don't...
Like, when we put a measuring device on, we actually fully understand that free will is a characteristic unique to human consciousness.
And the measuring device is that you are not debating with my server, or your piano, or your computer.
You're not arguing with your iPod about this, although it has come to your ears through the iPod.
You are, by raising these debate issues with me, which I appreciate, and you're doing a fantastic job.
I hope that my responses are somewhat satisfying, and of course let me know where I fall short.
But you heard my arguments come through your iPod, right?
But you don't argue with your iPod, you don't argue with my server, you don't argue with an mp3 program.
You argue, or with my website, you argue with me.
So, everything that we measure is deterministic.
That's true when we look at individuals, like you can separate someone, you can run an electrical impulse through someone's bicep and make it contract, right?
And you can, I don't know, attempt to give them washboard abs through late night adverts, getting them to buy stuff which shocks their bellies or whatever.
So that's all true.
Muscles, yeah, they work that way.
But you're not arguing with my bicep, right?
You're arguing with my rational consciousness.
So the measuring device that you are putting forward in your response to my argument is to say, Steph, there's only one part of you out of the whole universe, out of all of the myriad ways in which your argument was delivered to me, right?
Through the internet, through the server, through your player, your iPod player, your media player on your computer, or whatever.
Out of all of these ways of communicating this argument, Steph, there's only one Entity that I wish to respond to, Steph, and that is your rational consciousness.
So when you say everything we put a measuring device on behaves deterministically, that's not true, because the measuring device that you're putting on is my, Steph's, rational consciousness.
You're treating it as explicitly, completely and totally different, and the opposite of every other entity involved in the communication of this argument.
So your measuring device is that my thoughts are not deterministic, and therefore I think that It's not true what you're saying, just based upon your own actions.
Now, Peters says, Steph, you agree that free will is magic pixie dust, but you argue that people who say there can't be something like magic pixie dust are so obviously wrong that the cause must be psychological.
Well, just to be clear, I don't, I mean, I'm not a spiritualist, I'm not a superstitious.
When I use the phrase magic pixie dust, it is something that is unknown.
It doesn't mean that it is magic, right?
Just so you're clear about that, I certainly, I mean, maybe we'll know it at some point, maybe we won't.
But I certainly don't believe that it's just a magic X factor that is thrown into the universe that is irreducible and not...
You can't explore it or understand it scientifically.
I hope that we can. But that is not the case.
Peter goes on to say, Steph, you also stated that people's habits are like cement setting around them.
Is the setting of cement a deterministic process, or does it have free will?
I don't believe that...
And again, this is right on the edge of...
Of what I understand in terms of psychology, and of course I'm a philosopher, not a scientist, or a psychologist, so forgive me if this is hard to follow or of course ends up being factually incorrect.
But the way that I would analogize it is like this.
Someone has the choice to smoke or to not smoke.
And that's back to, right at the beginning of the podcast series, The Billion Dollar Proposition, which I actually recorded in this very room two and a half odd years ago.
So, I mean, if you pay someone a billion dollars to not smoke for 20 minutes, that person can achieve that and pick out his million dollars.
If someone has stage 4 lung cancer and you offer them a billion dollars to be cancer free for 20 minutes, they can't achieve it, right?
So this is the difference between that which we can will and that which we cannot will.
So, a man has the choice To choose whether to pick up a cigarette or not.
And again, I'm using the word choice here very loosely.
There's addiction, there's physical dependency, and so on.
But we understand the difference between offering someone a billion dollars to smoke or not versus to have or not have cancer.
One is possible, one is not.
So we understand that difference. Just to simplify it, perhaps a little too much, but just to put that line down the middle.
So a man does have the choice to smoke or not.
He does not have the choice To say, I will smoke and my health will not be negatively affected.
Even if you never, I think it's only like one in six or one in four smokers die of smoking-related ailments.
But whether they die of those ailments or not, smokers face inevitably diminished lung capacity.
I mean, that's just a fact.
You can't smoke and increase or maintain your lung capacity because it tires up the lungs and so on.
So a man can choose to smoke or not, but he cannot choose to smoke and increase or improve or maintain his lung capacity to the same degree that he would have if he didn't smoke.
So the choice is ours.
The consequences of the choices are not.
As I've said a couple of times before, I can choose to jump off a cliff or not, but I cannot choose to jump off a cliff and fly unaided.
Once I make the decision to jump off the cliff, Everything becomes deterministic.
My body falls, subject to the laws of gravity, because no further choice is possible.
I have now put myself in a situation where choice is no longer possible.
Because choice cannot affect the laws of physics.
I can't will myself to float.
So I can make the choice to jump off a cliff, but once I have made that choice and I'm off the cliff and I'm falling, my rational consciousness has no effect on my flight path, which is, you know, like a rock down.
So, I would say that people's habits are like cement sitting around them.
The setting of cement is deterministic, I would say, but whether we choose to do X, Y, or Z is up to us.
Peter then goes on to say, Steph, you are right if you say, a determinist who says, I want, contradicts himself.
But if a free-willer says the word cause in the context of human behavior, he also contradicts himself.
Child abuse causes war.
Bad parenting causes the state.
Cause assumes a deterministic relationship between cause and effect.
Even the difference between you and your brother, you try to give a cause in the presence of a nanny in your case.
There's more, but I don't think we need to go further into that one, because saying that there is influence is not saying that something is deterministic.
I used this example in the recent positions that I was taking on determinism, which is to say that if I have a family history of heart disease, it is not predetermined that I will end up with heart disease if I absorb that information, change my habits, and attempt to gain the optimum possible heart health.
Child abuse causes war, bad parenting causes the state has never, ever, ever been my position.
Ever. And how could it be?
I mean, again, just look at me, right?
If child abuse causes war and bad parenting causes the state, well, I was abused as a child and suffered under enormously bad parenting.
So how could I end up as a pacifist and an anarchist if child abuse causes war, bad parenting causes the state?
There are influences, for sure, And those influences can move people in a certain tendency or direction, right?
But it's what you choose to do with it.
So, to take an example, Dr.
Phil's father was an alcoholic.
And I believe that, oh yeah, his wife Robin's father was a gambler and I think a drinker or something like that.
And so what did Dr.
Phil say? Well, he said, my dad was an alcoholic, I think his grandfather was, so there seems to be something that runs in the family, which lends The McGraws to be susceptible to alcoholism.
And so he doesn't drink.
He's never taken a drink, as far as I know, at least as far as he reports.
So if he took a drink, it would probably be, the odds would be quite high that he might end up having a drinking problem, right?
But having looked at his history, he says, well, there's a risk factor here.
And therefore, I'm not going to take a drink because what's the point?
The cost-benefit ratio doesn't add up and so on.
So although there are influences, they're not predetermined.
And in fact, you can end up with quite the opposite situation.
So Dr.
Phil is a non-drinker.
He is a complete teetotaler because of a family history of alcoholism.
So, you can actually end up with the reverse position.
So, I mean, it's an interesting question.
I don't know the answer. I don't think the answer can be known, right?
So, if child abuse causes war, bad parenting causes the state, why have I become an anarchist pacifist?
Because I have seen the extremes of those brutal positions.
I have seen the personal effects and felt the personal effects of significant long-term violence within the family and in the state, though less, of course, in the state, but in the family.
And therefore I am a pacifist and an anarchist, because that propelled me to reason the arguments from first principles and so on.
So when you end up in that kind of situation, to me that comes down to a personal choice.
Because I grew up in such a situation of bad parenting, child abuse, mental health issues, my father's institutionalized, my mother's institutionalized, that is my heart disease.
Mental illness is the heart disease of my family.
And so, at the age of 18 or 19, when I first began to read psychology, it was pretty clear to me that I had come from a very problematic history and that mental illness was a big problem in my family.
And so, I made a commitment to work as hard as possible to develop and to maintain mental health.
And I think, at least I'm sure, I'm sure, but I can't prove that I have ended up very healthy mentally because of an acceptance and the taking of responsibility for mental health when I have a family history of mental illness.
In the same way that Dr.
Phil says, well, the men in my family are alcoholics, so I'm not going to drink.
He ends up healthier than if he hadn't had that information.
Because if he didn't have that family history, he could have just started drinking and maybe he would have become an alcoholic either way.
It could have just been accidental.
So the fact that he has a family history of alcoholism causes him to stay away from alcohol completely.
Somebody can end up a lot healthier if he has a family history of heart disease, eats well, exercises, And does all, gets regular checkups, right?
He could end up with a much healthier heart than someone who had no family history of heart disease.
And in the same way, my family history of mental illness has really focused me on attempting to discover, to put into practice, to disseminate what I consider to be good mental health practices.
And philosophy, of course, is, in my opinion, the fundamentally best mental health practice that is out there, right?
So that's sort of what I'm about.
So these things are not deterministic.
It really comes down to The responsibility that you take for what you have inherited and what it is that you're going to do with it.
And that's what I keep trying to get people across.
So, I don't want to go on too long, but I just wanted to respond to some of that stuff.
They're excellent questions. You posted these on the board.
I figured it would be easier to just talk through a response rather than type one.
Thank you so much, and please let me know what you think of this.
I look forward to your donations.
Isabella and Christina both say hello, and we are really loving being parents, even though it was a fairly sleepless night last night.
It is an absolutely wonderful thing, and we can't wait to tell you more about it.
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