Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux - Free Will and Determinism
Aired: 2025-06-28
Duration: 03:29


=== Do Proposed Actions Exist? (03:29) ===

[00:00:00]  All right.
[00:00:02]  Explain.
[00:00:05]  Oh, sorry.
[00:00:05]  If free will doesn't exist, should we somehow, so it should, sorry, should we nonetheless act as though it does?
[00:00:11]  Well, a free will, I mean, the word exists is, right?
[00:00:16]  My phone exists, my hat exists, my shirt exists.
[00:00:19]  They exist independent of my consciousness.
[00:00:21]  And we can check that through the consistent behavior of matter and, you know, sense evidence testing.
[00:00:26]  Logically consistent and sense evidence testing is how we know something exists.
[00:00:30]  A free will is an effect of consciousness, right?
[00:00:34]  Does gravity exist or is gravity an effect of mass?
[00:00:38]  Well, gravity doesn't exist independent of mass.
[00:00:41]  And like where there is no mass around, there is no gravity other than very, very faint, blah, blah, blah.
[00:00:48]  So a concept doesn't exist in the same way as that which it describes does exist, right?
[00:00:57]  There's a concept called a crowd, but a crowd is just an aggregation of individual people.
[00:01:02]  There's no such thing as a crowd.
[00:01:03]  When the people disperse, there's no such thing as the crowd left as a remnant, right?
[00:01:08]  So free will is a concept or a description of human consciousness, and the description is, free will is our ability to compare proposed actions to ideal standards, which is morality or efficiency or so on, right?
[00:01:23]  Or it could be something like business goals and so on.
[00:01:26]  Our proposed actions, we have the ability to compare proposed actions to ideal standards.
[00:01:32]  Now, does that ability exist?
[00:01:35]  No, it doesn't exist.
[00:01:37]  Consciousness is an effect of the brain.
[00:01:41]  It's a description of the biochemical and material effects of neurons in the brain.
[00:01:47]  A forest, as a concept, does not exist independent of the trees.
[00:01:52]  It is a description of the trees.
[00:01:55]  So free will does not exist independent of human consciousness.
[00:01:58]  It does not exist as a material entity in its own right.
[00:02:03]  But free will is a valid concept.
[00:02:05]  So if you have two bananas, you add two more bananas, you now have four bananas.
[00:02:10]  But the number two, the number two, and the number four are not somehow attached to the bananas.
[00:02:15]  They don't exist in an independent state.
[00:02:18]  They are conceptual descriptions of what is occurring in the world.
[00:02:22]  So conceptual descriptions are valid or invalid.
[00:02:24]  They do not exist independent of our minds.
[00:02:29]  So is free will a valid concept?
[00:02:31]  Sure, yeah.
[00:02:32]  Do we have the ability to compare proposed actions to ideal standards?
[00:02:35]  Absolutely.
[00:02:36]  We certainly have the ability to create ideal standards.
[00:02:38]  Something like tell the truth or do not aggress or be courageous and so on.
[00:02:44]  So we have the ability to propose ideal standards or to have ideal standards.
[00:02:50]  Can we compare our proposed actions to ideal standards?
[00:02:56]  Sure, we do it all the time.
[00:02:56]  Should I, shouldn't I?
[00:02:58]  Should I have this piece of cheesecake?
[00:02:59]  Should I go exercise?
[00:03:00]  Should I tell the truth?
[00:03:00]  Should I, whatever?
[00:03:02]  Should I be mean?
[00:03:03]  Should I succumb to temptation?
[00:03:05]  So we have ideal standards and we can compare our proposed actions to ideal standards all the time.
[00:03:09]  This catches the determinist who says you should be a determinist.
[00:03:12]  In other words, you should compare your proposed actions called continuing to believe in free will or act as if you have free will.
[00:03:18]  You should compare your proposed actions to an ideal standard called determinism.
[00:03:22]  So this formulation of free will, which is valid, rejects determinism as a self-contradictory argument.