Do Human Brains Have Free Will? | Episode 609 | Closer To Truth

41 thoughts on “Do Human Brains Have Free Will? | Episode 609 | Closer To Truth”

1. Everyone just assumes, as an unargued philosophical bias, that, whenever we speak of ‘free will’, we all intuitively seem to know what we’re talking about…
   If physicalism were true, then how is it possible for the physicalist to change his mind, explain the ‘problem of other minds’, avoid becoming a solipsist, engaging in intelligent discourse…
   For the physicalist (like John Searle), it really IS a problem, not so much because it leads him to the absurd conclusion of a Boltzmann brain, but because the alternative, determinism, ineluctably and unavoidably leads him into the realm of the metaphysical where ‘consciousness’ could be synonymous with ‘soul’ or ‘spirit’, all of which raises the question of… God!
   But… rather hold to the absurd than even considering the possibility of God having breathed life into the creature to give them their ‘elan vital’!

2. Avoiding reality because it may be psychologically less healthy is a very unsatisfying reason to prop up an illusion. It may require walking a knife edge to use this knowledge, but don’t all great new powers? It’s like belief in god, it can be depressing and frightening to those imprinted deeply enough. Doesn’t make it right, and sometimes a transition period with many difficulties is required.

3. It could be more mundane than we want to admit.
   Our minds are layed and complex. You may have a clear causal thought which says pick door A, but your emotional state might over ride your logic and vote for a more risky choice and your logical mind gives in. This is a simplistic example, but due to less than fully conscious urges etc., these decisions FEEL like they aren’t simply determined.
   So when someone suggests our entire mind is determined it feels wrong. Recent tests show action prior to decision, which suggests what we feel as a decision is really just salesmanship and self delusion. It is as if the part we call “I” or feel as consciousness is really just like a lawyer, representing this entire system we call brain, or mind.

4. I am conscious of the fact that my brain is selfserving. Altruism and love are subordinate
   to evolutionary necessity. Which is survival and the urge to spread my genes.

5. Let me help. In the simulated reality that we believe we exist in we absolutely do not have free will as is evidenced by the sensed deterministic nature of our sensed reality within the realm of what is only believed to be physical .

   The problem then becomes what of this simulation is true. Since nothing in the sensed reality is actual physical it therefore can not be deterministic at all. In fact, our true and only reality is not sensed or physical at all and therefore everything is delivered by a Conscious Agent who is totally independent of this simulated reality and is absolutely free to manipulate its simulated reality through consciously creating the simulated reality of its choosing .

6. In making a choice, your brain uses processes and memories that have been built up over your entire life based on your personnel experiences. Free will is simply the ability to pull on these resources and choose a course of action based on them. In this respect free will is simply making an informed decision based on your own very personal experience. Whether the decision is predetermined by the laws of physics or not is irrelevant, since it is impossible to determine what that predetermined outcome would be.

7. No.

8. The much ballyhooed experiment about the brain allegedly deciding measurably before the mind is a lot less impressive than advertised. The fact that there is a lag before the choice becomes full conscious doesn't mean that the original "brain choice" wasn't due to free will. If you ever spotted a path to proof of something mathematical conjecture or a winning chess move, you are familiar with how much more is involved in being able to consciously articulate what you spotted compared to simply spotting it. For that matter, flash different shapes on a screen and ask people to estimate when they could see it was a square or a circle and you will no doubt see a lag in reported time vs when the brain waves indicate recognition happened.

   Deep questions won't be answered by poorly constructed experiments.

9. Atheists hate the concept of free will because theists use it support of the existence of God.

10. Human brains are the only brains we know of, including the brains which were part of the species which came before us, which has free will. Humans have the POWER to alter the fate of the universe because of our ability to think freely about the universe. The universe is ordered. Human thought is abstract, but in order to alter the fate of the universe, the human brain must work in concert of the order of the universe. You cannot violate the laws of the universe, this would be the strongest argument against freedom of the will, but daily we are reminded that people decide to violate the laws of the universe. Since most people don't regard themselves as an integral component of the universe, instances where humans wrong one another don't seem important, but the mastery of the universe requires the maximum level of human cooperation. The maximum level of human cooperation is the strongest force in the universe and it is the reason why the universe created us, so if we fail to be the strongest force in the universe, it's because we have free will and rather violate the laws of the universe than work together and be our intended purpose. So, in the future, when people live free of fear from harm from any neighbor, people will ask the question and feel as though they lack free will because being consistantly good for generations will make it seem as though you lack free will, but the truth is that people are mastering what it means to be human, and there is always the freedom, but people know a better way to live.
    Furthermore, every animal is different. The reason why a fully charging Grizzly bear will halt if you, a human, stands his ground is because it has no will. It's conscious and has instincts, but it is a naked animal which has to protect its health, and it will halt because it has no way of determining how it relates to you. On the other hand, the same grizzly protecting its cub will exhibit very different behavior, I think this behavior is still instinctual. Bears are solitary animals, and I believe that pack or social animals are the ones which develop wills. For instance, Chimpanze certainly engage in warfare, I believe that dolphins do the same. These aren't free wills, they are still instinctual behaviors they are engaging in, but the social aspect of the engagements is on a higher level than the solitary acts of solitary animals. Our will is the product of evolution, and it is a product of a prolonged evolution as a social family line. Communication is a critical aspect of there being will because it allows many to act as a single force. We had the hands and body shape to build innovatively, but when our brains allowed for abstract communication, we gained freedom of will because the universe is ordered by law, and not itself an abstraction.
    If you were a robot you would not think to create free will and you would not. We don't see with our eyes, and inside my body is complete darkness, everything you are is your consciousness and you are conscious of the dreams you remember. Consciousness is what you and every animal relies upon for survival. In each living body, everything of the outside universe is absorbed by the brains you are working with. It's your brains interpretation. Consciousness is essentially accepting the universe as real, and this is a survival tactic for all animals. The will has to do with producing future results, and I think there are some animals, including elephants which have will, elephants have memory and they have a purpose to their migration, and abstraction is the freedom. We are blessed with both abstract thought of the universe, and absolutely everything we experience and know of it is a feature of our brains and consciousness, and we have a physical form which allows us to craft the things which allows us to realize of purpose in the universe. There is no purpose for anything you have in your life whatsoever, unless everything in the universe has genuine purpose. So if you have experienced genuine purpose in you life before, and know that purpose exist from personal experience, you understand that everything in the universe has purpose, and the neurons in your head is the only thing the universe has constructed to understand itself. You are the universe because all you do is absorb all of the universe you can possibly absorb, and you can never separate yourself from the universe, and if you think there is a purpose to anything, you must conclude that there is a purpose to everything, for all time.
    Quantum indeterminacy might give rise to randomness, but are we prepared to conclude that we've mastered everything to know at the quantum level. I don't believe there is something mystical occuring in the brain, and everyone ought recognize that a person with a hole in their brain are seriously effected, but for consciousness, I think people fail to recognize the obvious that animals too are conscious, and for the will, there has been 1 billion years of chemistry involved in constructing one, I'm not expecting people living in the space stone age to have the answers to everything, but people ought recognize that the decisions they make are each and collectively each the real value in the universe. The universe doesn't place a value on anything, everything is simply influenced by the forces of the universe. Human decisions place a value on things in the universe, the force is stronger than all of the forces in the universe combined. It's the power of decisions along with work. The universe does no work, only living things do work. Humans do the best work in the universe because we are different from the other animals and have abstract thought of what can be accomplished in the universe. What can be accomplished in the universe is a limit on what works in the universe, not a limit upon what is attempted to suffice or work in the universe, again, to be successful in the universe you have choices to make and are required to make the correct one, which is the true arguement against a free will, but our primitive civilization knows unequivocally that there is a free will because countless individuals make counterproductive decisions which are devastatingly bad. We are not tasked with being perfect, but abstraction means that there is some person who would literally try everything, so, the universal will needs to guide in a fashion which disallows actual free will, in favor of, dynastic collective will.
    Determinism, you don't maintain the same consciousness or will throughout your life. Determinism is more to do with being in time. Time is a real aspect of the universe and it is relevant to every aspect of our lives. Our consciousness will relegate something to the subconscious, like driving the final stretch home. Humans are not born knowing anything. We learn just as a cub learns to hunt from the lioness. You are solely your consciousness and will, and as time passes, your will is what's most subject to change, but you become conscious of more of the universe, especially if you continue learning.
    I exist not! Do you own the jacket you are wearing? Refer to Kant, but what is the single thing every living thing owns? Their consciousness! All the universe is absorbed into the consciousness, if you are not conscious, you are claiming to own nothing. Ergo, you are nothing, therefore you exist not! You couldn't possibly be this wrong about yourself now could you!
    The doctor is correct that we have free will to do according to our neurons in rejection of other's neurons, but this is not an examination into the question of free will, this is an analysis of our interest in "being" free, which is actually a political philosophy consideration. Your unique abstraction is the extent of your free will, and exercise of the will in the universe is a political consideration.
    I think what the doctor is describing is a duality and conflict of multiple wills. This type of person need to be approached and taught how to function within the bounds of the law with this duality. A person ought to be judged on the behavior exibited by the individual, and unless the duality is a diagnosable split of true good versus true evil, both halves of the brain can learn not to engage in unlawful activity.
    Denying free will is to deny you existence as human. We are free, and go to the beach to get a tan, turtles swim to the beach to instinctually lay their eggs. What are all the wonders we can do with the world, and most of us, especially most of the people you have interviewed, spend all of their time in civilization or the city. These are not natural constructs, they are principled in the laws of the universe, else they would not stand. We have a degree of freedom what we can do in the universe, and we have to freedom to dream anything possible. You'll never master the universe until you realize that you were the only thing designed to.
    I don't know the mechanism which gives rise to free will, I just know how to observe the fact that it exist in the universe. I live in a neighborhood of houses. Those houses are only there because of free will, otherwise the landscape would be natural, and these house are distinct from bird's nest because they each look different from the other. There are principles which they all must follow to stand as a house, but the variety of houses validate the presence of abstraction, and it is the ability to think of the universe in abstract terms which gives rise to freedom to do all the things possible in the universe.

11. Once organics compounds and biological life came into existence the universe lost it deterministic setting since organics compounds and biological life can trans mutate information. We are a brain, the stuff that we think to be ourselves (I, me, thinker, lover, etc.) are tools/creations of the brain. Nature created quantum intelligence and we are it. We have free will because our brain calculate/simulate probabilities and choose based on desired outcome. The universe did not select all the YouTube videos we click on during it formation because it did not have all that human generated information.

12. Free will is our power of intent, which along with conscience and awareness, are the 3 major properties of the spirit. It operates in accord with conscience which develops and degrades in accord with our intents+actions. We are free to obey and develop conscience via virtue, and free to degrade it via disobedience and neglect (materialism: lust, greed, aversion, indulgence in sensuality). Quantum mechanics is nonsense. It has been known for 30 years that classical physics rules all levels of physical phenomena. The 2 options for understanding given herein are nonsense, based upon wrong understandings and knowledge. The brain is just a lump of fat. It does not do all we accredit it with. If there is damage to the nervous system, it has no effect upon the spirit. The difference will be that the spirit reads faulty sensory data, and writes to a faulty system of initiating actions based upon intent. The spirit is zero dimensional and outside of spacetime. None of the choices or associated information have validity. They are always rooted in wrong views.

13. What’s worrying is that Michael Merzenich, a neuroscientist, someone who is supposed to be educated uses the word “irregardless”. Sorry, pet peeve of mine I guess.

14. When someone asserts that free will exists, that also assumes that the self also exists, because there is an "I" making decisions. Why do we assume that the self exists? Is it possible to have an experience of not having a self (psychedelics & meditation) ? What is this feeling of "I"? If there is no "I" making decisions, then does that mean they're happening by themself?

15. it is very interesting that when someone is reaching his limits to understand the world and universe, he maybe found something beyond..

16. the idea that quantum mechanics would not effect the brain is crazy (24:42) that is if they think that quantum mechanics can not work in the large world of wet brains, because we are learning that alot of our biological processes ARE effected by quantum mechanics.

17. so michael murr has a point but it is a limted point. many many people who have had absolutely normal lives commit extremely terrible crimes. maybe they can not sontrol themselves but the reasons why can be many but the biggest reason i see is their lack of love. and this type of behavior we can observe from the moment of birth in these people.

18. There is no free will. Every choice has a price.

19. Bell's experiment has now been done many times, and the answer is unequivocal: determinism at the quantum level is not true. Nature is not deterministic. The experiments showed that every quantum process entails some degree of “indeterminism”; that is, there are predictable probabilities but there is never certainty.

20. Consider this. Our thought and behavior result from hierarchical neural networks. Lower level (deterministic) neuronal activity produces higher-level "emergent" activity that has additional characteristic than those of what produced it – the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. That is "self", "consciousness," and "free will." You can study each and never discover what produced it. These emergent phenomena do not strictly depend on antecedent events; they become new entities that can produce thought, behavior, and self-control, and decision-making. In this way, humans have free will (subject to genetics, early childhood development, life experiences, and any forces extant at the time of a decision that would bias the decision). Thus, humans have constrained free will; they have choice, and in most cases, humans are responsible for their words, behavior, and actions.

21. There seems to be a lot of people among the philosophers and psychologists who want to "save free will". Maybe we should ask why they want to save it? Like one person said, it protects some people from depression. But on the other hand, it makes us want revenge and creates a judicial system that is based on the notion that individuals have free will and as such we can punish them for choosing the wrong thing.

    I think one major reason why people want to save free will is that, if we follow the science that leads to determinism, it also means that the accomplishments they have received congratulations and pride over are not their own in the sense that they think. They want to save their prosperous position in the meritocracy and the feeling of being better than others.

    The experience of free will is strong and it has both positive and negative effects on our behaviour.

22. Absolutely not. Point is is it doesn't matter in that the degree of the illusion that we think we do is strong enough to make it a working functionality

23. The question of free will are the question an infant, god, who would ask to itself, at the begining, of the discovery, of itself.
    Do you see it, your questions of creation and reality , are the questions of your collective selves and your existence.
    You, are, one of the mind cells of the mind, of god.
    Yes, it's us, it always was and unit always will be.
    It's the only thing that can be real to your mind.
    To be, believed.
    And no one, who has or ever will live , can deny the existence of this one, true, real, provable, god.
    A man, and a woman, create, a new human being.
    We all dishonor our mothers and fathers with our lack of care to learn science correctly.
    Scientifically, god commands, that your are responsible for all the living things, affected by you, in the protection, of your own creation and existence.
    That would be moral standards of a scientific god, in the flesh.
    Because science, measures it, to be something real.
    A real, mother and father, if altruistic science, in creating their baby.
    You cannot, possibly, not see it.

24. My own animal mind is humongous, powerful, clever, and treacherous. It can seize you, stop your free will.
    It is enslaved to you, it's enslavement to run everything for you, to keep alive and you don't have to do it all the time.
    You, now the step above,,,, benefit from your animal mind, it is what gives you your free will, but it is in pain, pain, to do it.
    That's how it can seize you and make you do really awful things that the real you really did not really want.
    Alyhiugh you can join with it do whatever it's wants to do.
    It's. The devil, evil, the ignorance and automated program of the animal mind, stopping our free will, Its is the harms done to others that the intelligent mind of god knows is harmful to the free will of god, god is for now a bare step above. We must see it, accept the fact that god, is just an infant.
    And sometimes, you wonder if god actually sees it's self, as a real step above.
    All evil, the four types of human damaged by another is caused by the selfishness of the human, animal mind.

25. Free Will is not an illusion, it is real and has immense practical applications in our lives. It is something very profound than we think. The origin of free will is so primitive that it seems to precede creation.

26. Very interesting, thank you!

27. If you believe in libertarian free will you have to believe in some type of you which is separate to the physical rules of the universe as we know them – a soul!

28. It depends on the government exerted by the souls that control the brain and how model a citizen of their republic the brain decides to be

29. It's an illusion inside an illusion. When you play a 1 video game its seems you have free to drive a car, change clothes, choose a weapon, enter a room, pick up an item. It is free will but only within the limits of the program. If there was only 1 game you would never know what you were missing! Another game might have trains and shipping logistics. Tour options for freewill are just focused on different choices. Each game could be a universe unaware of each others physics. I would say we are in only 1 possible game/universe so we can't not tell. We have free will within the limits the wave function. The catch is we can't go back so its always guiding and limiting our possible choices. If someone is attacked by a bear a loses an arm. The next day your free will options would be different. The options appearing in your subconscious would change. You would have knowledgeof a bear attack and approach the differently. Also the lack of an arm would prevent your free will from working. Somethings you could not do anymore. This would just change your choice options in the program. Eventually your freewill free would drift towards things that were options. If everyone one only had 1 arm than you wouldn't know what you were missing. That would be a normal game. LOL I always comment an each time I can explain 0003% of what I actually think! Freewill is another one that's connected in a weird way :0

30. God, is real and he created everything, period !!!

31. Made me think, do we exhibit free will in dreams?

32. Human brains are computed by consciousnesses. They're an effect, not a cause. 😉

33. Is “free will” simply the ability to act autonomously? How autonomous do you want to be to consider yourself “free”? Mendel and Darwin say I’m not free from my ancestors. Kahneman and Tversky say I’m not rational. I’m influenced by advertisements, political rhetoric, diet, and even the smells in the room. Maybe freedom is simply not being actively coerced? Good ad campaigns and political rhetoric comes pretty near coercion, particularly when it’s targeted, such as what happens on social media. Perhaps the ability to imagine various scenarios and their related outcomes, counterfactual thinking, gives me more “freedom” than other creatures? I think this gives me more freedom in the sense that I can better align my decisions with desired outcomes, but I think that is closer to a definition of intelligence than freedom.

    Maybe free will is the weighing of expected harm/benefit from a given decision. Do I marry Jane? Well, Jane is very nice, lovely, healthy, etc. But there are other women I could marry. Maybe I want to prioritize my career instead. Different fields of science focus on different aspects of decision-making using words like intuition, emotion, moral values, identity, belief, desire, and reason. Many of these factors are likely to overlap in making a particular decision. It seems to me perfectly consistent with what we already know about the inner workings of the brain that our experience of making a free decision is merely the weighing of these various overlapping realms. Perhaps the articulation of the relevant concepts, expected outcomes, etc. in conscious thought is useful for complex decision making. I still can’t make sense of the “free” part of the decision. Colin McGinn’s “mental causation” is another word for a soul because it has to be free from your neurons in order to give you free will, but of course we know that our psychological experience is our brain because we can use various physical mechanisms to manipulate it.

    I still feel like I have free will, but I don’t think I do.

34. In fact I don’t think free will makes us human at all that would be good will and enough people have revealed an absence of that while exercising free will to make think they are less than human , my guy

35. Can there be anything in the fact that quantum probabilities add up to 1, and measurement of quantum wave function with probabilities updates to 1? The one of the quantum probabilities measures / collapses into one of classic certainty? Could the quantum probabilities be rearranged around a particle?

36. Could mental causation be mathematical? Something in brain acts mathematically to cause a physical determinist chain?

37. Is there anything physical that responds to mental causation?

38. How could future quantum probabilities bring about conscious free will to measure into classic certainty in brain?

39. Future is not determined in physical brain? Maybe future provides gap for free will mind in the brain?

40. Might free will be from future? How could the future happen in brain?

41. For free will or natural choice, consciousness of person able to direct physical brain to act?

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