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July 28, 2025 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
04:01
Free Will and Occam's Razor
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We wouldn't say that.
We would say life is an emergent property of the wolf and it doesn't need a soul.
And so, consciousness we see happening not just in ourselves, but in monkeys and dolphins and other, certainly the more intelligent mammals, we can see consciousness emerge, not as sophisticated or abstract as ours, but definitely something.
And so, we accept that consciousness exists without necessarily ascribing souls to donkeys or monkeys or crows or dolphins or anything like that.
And so, when it comes to free will, adding something that is immaterial, self-contradictory, and unproven does not prove anything.
And the simplest, the Occam's razor explanation is that free will is an emergent property of human consciousness in the same way that consciousness and life itself is an emergent property of other things.
And you don't need to add an incorporeal, indetectable, abstract ghost that can't ever be proven in reality and think you've answered anything.
Well, you do need to add it if materialism is an insufficient explanation and can't actually explain how we would have free will.
No, but that's circular.
So you can't say that materialism is insufficient, and that's why we need a soul.
Because how do you know that materialism is insufficient, given that we see emergent properties all the time everywhere?
Right.
well, you could just think about it, right?
So it's...
Okay.
If everything is determined, like under materialism by laws of logic, or sorry, not laws of logic, laws of physics, right?
And all of our thoughts are produced by neurons that are firing.
It's a chemical reaction based on or governed by laws of physics, not by us, right?
No, that's begging the question, though.
The question is, are the operations of our brain purely deterministic and outside the realm of choice?
So you can't say, well, if we assume that everything's deterministic and outside the realm of choice, it's like, but that's called begging the question.
That's what we're trying to prove or establish.
Okay, well, what part of what I said do you disagree with?
Do you think that the atoms in our head and the neurons firing are outside of the laws of physics?
Well, can any individual carbon atom move around, eat, screw, and breed?
Okay.
But wolves can do all of those things.
Does that mean that wolves are defying the laws of physics?
No.
Right?
So no individual atom or neuron in my brain has free will, but my brain has free will.
It doesn't defy the laws of physics.
No atom can move on its own and walk across the landscape, but wolves can, and they're all composed of atoms.
It's all about you, wolves have free will.
No, because wolves cannot compare.
You remember the definition, right?
You've got to stick with the definitions.
Do wolves have the capacity to compare proposed actions to ideal standards?
Well, we need to talk about that if we're going to.
No, no, they don't.
There's not much to talk about.
They don't.
Well, no, I mean.
Wolves don't have language.
They don't have abstract conceptual reasoning.
They can't do syllogisms.
They can't.
That's why they're not part of the social contract.
I don't agree with you about how you're defining free will.
Well, I'm going to stop here because we've been talking for like, I don't know, 20 minutes or half an hour.
Yeah, that's fine.
Hang on, hang on.
And now you're telling me that you don't even accept the initial definition.
So there's really no point going down a long sequential reasoning if you disagree with everything at the beginning, because that's just a bait and switch, right?
Because I assume if you don't disagree with me, and we actually did go over this and you accepted emergent properties and you accepted that we have the capacity to compare proposed actions to ideal standards.
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