Waking Up with Sam Harris #39 – Free Will Revisited (with Daniel Dennett)

47 thoughts on “Waking Up with Sam Harris #39 – Free Will Revisited (with Daniel Dennett)”

1. I respect Dennett, but he's old. His imagination is shot. He's unable to step outside the stream of cause. Harris is the young buck of four horsemen who's involved in new science, and is able to push his imagination, his mind, further than the other three.

2. I don't understand Dennett's exact issue… I think he should try to just lay out exactly what he thinks of the topic, in a sentence or two, that we are all familiar with.. using the terminology we generally subscribe to. Just for the sake of understanding his position better, in a clear manner.

   A lot of what he says just doesn't seem reasonable at all.. or isn't what Sam was talking about.. and it's so dragged out and slow, too. If Dennett wants his position to be known and accepted more than it is… then I think he could certainly do a better job.

3. Do "you" have free will? I'd first like a precise definition of who "you" is, as the entity which has free will. Without knowing what "you" is, there's no chance at all of moving on to discussing whether the "you" has free will. Without that, I couldn't even talk about or describe what free will could even BE. I see caused processes, I see random processes. What is a "free will process?" It would have to be a special "you" which could have a "free will process" — something I've never heard of, otherwise, in the natural world.

4. I can't stand Sam. He's not that bright and a condescending little prick. Daniel is making perfectly logical sense, yet Sam just can't grasp it. He's getting circles ran around him in so many conversations or debates. Jordan Peterson was on his podcast several times and Sam was so out gunned and witted smh. Sam however just couldn't keep his mouth shut and continued to try an argue his perspective and just keep traveling in the wrong direction over a definition he believes and it was wrong.

5. 40:53 –40:54 the best argument is here

6. If we had an absolute cosmic knowledge about every aspect of our consciousness, we could interpret our every action deterministically. As Newton stated "For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction" which I ASSUME applies for our consciousness as well. But reality is that we are far removed from that knowledge. We can assume there are deterministic reasons for every action we take, but it might be extremely difficult or even impossible to find them out. Wouldn't it be reasonable in that case to label them, in utilitarian spirit, as "free will"?
   The ABSOULTE unbiased truth might exists, but it is an unreachable ideal given the constrains of our consciousness (in my life experience we are not absolutely objective beings). I also have a problem with the term "interpretation" i used earlier. It seems to me that we are not capable to shed preconcieved biases in our interpretations of the world and ourselves. We are streched between subjective (self-serving, survival-of-the-fittest) worldview and a worldview that converges to absolute objectivity where our needs and wants are irrelevant in grander scheme of things. Various people enter philosophical discourse from various positions in this spectre.

7. Mistakes are valuable, it's how we learn. We might read someone who has a very close view to ours, but there might be something that we think is mistaken which prompts us to make something clearer in our own work.

8. I've listened to a number of debates between Sam Harris and Jordan Peterson but this is the first Dennett discussion I've listened to. It's interesting to note that a lot of the comments on this discussion read exactly like the comments under the Peterson/Harris discussions. "Why can't Peterson/Dennett understand Harris' arguments?" "Why do they keep introducing religious language?" "It's sad to see how these so-called intellectuals aren't smart enough to follow Harris' logic" "Why can't he agree to Harris' definitions of words?" "Peterson/Dennett is just playing semantic games" etc. I guess the arguments made by "your" side always seem stronger than the arguments used by your opponents.

9. I am up to 1:33:00 and I am really getting annoyed at Dan‘s constantly evading a response to Sam’s analogies or thought experiments by just saying something akin to “that’s not a good example- here’s a better one.” He has just done it about the mind reading machine predicting poetry. Dan first says that his mind is to complex to predict, which is not relevant to the principle that Sam is illustrating, then when Sam reduces it to just being about to read word by word 500ms before the poet, Dan just says “let’s put that aside”.
   It’s incredibly frustrating that he just won’t join the dots.

   As far as I can see, Sam is happy to preserve punishments as public protection and deterrence but no more than that – essentially it’s a social engineering project. What rules, punishments and rewards do we need in the system to disincentivise the wrong behaviour and incentivise the right behaviour. That’s it. That is the point of laws and criminal justice. I wonder if Dan would concede this. Retribution only makes sense if you believe that the person could have done otherwise (ie that some inherent, non deterministic agency attaches to the individual) and that requires metaphysical, libertarian free will, which neither Sam nor Dan accept.

10. Dennett destroyed Harris. AND Dennett did it so such a polite way.

11. Dennett is saying that free will is based on how mentally healthy you are. That is not the point Dennett, god damn.
    You just can't give in to a younger mind bettering you, how pathetic, really.

12. Commenting as I listen: as far as I understand, Sam Harris, and most determinists do NOT believe "punishment" is defensible, but "forced rehabilitation" if possible, if not forced seclusion. I believe Sam would see it as "trying to fix broken robots."

13. I haven't read where Sam called Dan a theologian, but Dan seems especially upset about it. In fact, he disappointingly comes off as petty. I think, had Sam come out and apologized immediately, this would all have been far more civil.

14. Dan should call it "ethical reasoning" it's not free will. I don't believe determinism precludes the idea of moral responsibility.

15. Dan, so at what point does an agent become culpable? Brain tumor? Brain damage? Psychosis? Bi-polar? OCD? At what point do we assign culpability?

16. So at 59:30 ish, if that parent failed that child, is it then culpable?

17. Determining does not lead me to believe me there is no moral responsibility. Rather it adds social responsibility to personal responsibility. We can only know which "robots are defective" based on comparing it to the whole. It is society's responsibility to "rewire" these robots.

18. Dan Dennett is assuming every outcome is the result of a conscious thought.

19. 1:13:40. I believe Dan shows a staggering ignorance of the judicial system. As far as psychological and neurological conditions go, the law does has only one, near impossible to reach, exclusion.

20. 1:19:10. I'm not sure Dan would still stand behind this statement. Even if people did take advantage in the way he says, they're still broken robots. The challenge in that scenario is to find the afflicted people and medicate them ASAP.

21. Also, I think Dan is describing comic book evil geniuses. These people are rare.

22. I find it fascinating that Sam Harris would seem to reject the possibility of free will because he can't imagine how a materialistic, deterministic physics could give rise to such a phenomenon,… and yet simultaneously insists that consciousness, which evidently he believes is real and arises from the proper function of the brain, is an absolute certainty! Consciousness exists but free will can't exist?!?! Free will can't exist but people can still be held legally liable and responsible for the choices they make. How does any meaningful choice exist when there can be no free will ? But what really surprises me is Sam's insistence that humanity would necessarily become more humane once it has given up on the possibility of free will .

23. The author of action is the machine, though it is not immediately aware of its own authorship.
    This does not remove responsibility at all.
    It merely changes the nature of the necessary moral response.
    The tumor example brings up an interesting concept.
    The tumor is in all reality a part of the agents mind and its effect is emminent in his actions.
    This does not mean the localized decision machine is not ultimately to be responded to for its actions, on the contrary it is responded to in the sense that it is either destroyed (death) in the case that somehow the mechanism is undiscoverable, modified (remove tumor) in the case that it is discoverbale and treatble or placed in an environment where the unmodified mechanism would act differently ( imprisonment) in the case where it is discoverable but untreatable for whatever reason.

    Each of these actions is an appropriate response regardless of the fact that the decision is made by an unconcious machine. The concious portion of that machine is not held responsible because it is not the cause of the action. If anything its regret and the aggregated processing of memory may be what ultimately modifies how the unconcious machine works in the future.

    Say we do understand how it all works. And how every single internal mecha ksm works in concert to lead to action.
    This does not at all remove responsibility from the entity in question. It simply entails a different response since we can now judge it against a back drop of reality as opposed to conservative or liberal speculation out of ignorance.

24. many debate over the notion that a corporation is a person, however the reality is that all people are legal fictions, ie, corporations, made of many parts that come and go and have only a persistent legal designation. I am not the same person I was ten years ago, however if I did something ten years ago, I can still be held accountable for it. If you treat me like any corporation legally, then everything boils down to contract law. As to the social contract where criminal law is involved, there can be the understanding that internal physical damage, or internal psychological damage and external coercion, impede the human corp. from acting in its best interest and that of society and this should influence criminal punishment/rehab.

25. I'm glad to hear at the end that Sam apologized to Dan for how wrote back to him in that earlier exchange because i'm sure Dan is more than a good friend to him, and from hearing those words at the beginning i'm sure doesn't reflect his genuine feelings of Dan as a friend. I was a little upset that he spoke to him that way and for Dan having to read what he wrote to him.

26. bennet just did not want to listen or did not understand, interesting

27. I think Dennett just cannot grasp the concept, which of course is not his fault. When he uses the analogy of controlling a boat he surely makes the case against free will. The fact that he has knowledge and skill about sailing boats and others don't means that it cannot be free will that lead him to obtain those skills because he wasn't in control of the factors that brought him to that place of privilege. He is simply stating that "because I can sail a boat we all have free will". That is a very stupid argument.

28. Its sad Daniel Dennett, is an idiot. Pompous, arrogant, not engaging honesty… disgusting waste of time… its like Dennett is a drunk old Santa Claus or something… its obvious its all about himself… and not the philosophy… I almost hear anti-social personality disorder coming out of Dennett. One phrase of his haunts me, he said "the only reason psychopaths, follow the law is they will be caught." it came out of left field, almost like Dennet was talking about his own pathology.

29. Sam got mangled here, and frankly, made himself look like a neuroscientist-in-name-only.

30. It’s an unsettled paradox. We live in a world with no evidence for free will yet one that still would be rendered absurd and unintelligible with out it

31. Is it just me or is Dennett's position informed by the idea that to not have free will is just incredibly fucking inconvenient from the point of view of organised civilisation? I don't get how he keeps returning to the idea of how people have to be held responsible for their actions in order for the justice system to work; even if they aren't truly responsible, it doesn't mean society has to tolerate behavior outside the box.

32. This was such a treat for the brain.

33. "I largely agree with that"
    "We agree on most of that"
    "Wouldnt you agree with all of that?"
    "I certainly agree with most of that"

    Philosophers am i right.

34. I think what this really comes down to is that Sam is a scientist, or if you can’t grant him that due to his slipshod work in the field of neuroscience including his doctoral dissertation then at least that he is left-brained and analytical in a similar fashion to the way that a scientist is. Dan seems to be more right-brained, introspective, and non-dualistic. To such a person, something can be one way while also simultaneously another way, even if the two positions fundamentally are incompatible, as with here. We are either ultimately in control of our actions or we are not, that’s the topic. I’m a left-brained scientist type personally (I’m a clinical microbiologist) and I can completely rationalize the idea that out of the statements “we ultimately have complete control of our actions/thoughts” and “we ultimately do not have complete control or our actions/thoughts”, one of these statements is objectively true and the other is objectively false. Even if we don’t know which is which right now, we can make the claim that only one of these statements, not both, is correct. As someone who leans toward a strict duality in this sense, I see compatibilists as trying to have their cake and eat it too. And I think this premise matters, because it helps explain why/how certain people think what they do and other people think what they do, differentially. This is why Sam is not well-liked in a lot of philosophy circles because he approaches philosophy as a scientist and not as a philosopher. I can recognize this because I do the same thing. Now whether this makes you a bad philosopher is debatable. I certainly think it helps make you a more ultimately useful philosopher than the other type, but that’s just my take. What I say when I mean this is that I don’t think ideas of compatibilism are as potentially useful in the objective reality, as in ways that we can implement to better society/humanity, as ideas of determinism are. I’ve already said more than enough, but if you’d like me to expound, please comment below.

35. The supreme court justice example seems dated now

36. How do compatibilists combat the fact that all decisions are in some way made up of small, very small, very very small considerations. Every single consideration is tied to the past and every one of them weighs in one direction or another. Thoughts of the future have nothing to do with the actual future they are just ideas solidified from the flow of history.

37. I disagree with your definition of 'free will'. I define 'free will' as having the ability to take action that is following God's will (Good) or not following God's will (Evil). Just thinking about something, is not taking action, and therefore not free will. Adam and Eve were tempted to sin (do evil), but didn't sin until they ate from the Tree Of The Knowledge Of Good and Evil (ACTION)(Genesis 3:6). Belief in something is not action, and therefore not free will. Falling in love with something or someone is not action, until you give in to your lusts or desires, but may or may not be sin depending how this is done. Falling in love with another Christian and having sex in marriage is following God's will (Good)(1 Corinthians 7:1-16). Taking action without thinking (impulsive or reflexive) may or may not be sin depending how this is done. If someone attacks you, and you don't turn the other cheek, but instead fight back, you may need to ask God for forgiveness (Matthew 5 :39). Married men who were thinking about committing adultery (cheating on their wives) commits, what Jesus calls the sin of the heart (Matt. 5: 27-28), a different special type of sin that can also be forgiven by God. God's Love is Perfect, Pure, and the reason why we have 'free will'. God loved us so much that He shared His existence with us, and provided a way back to His True Love through his Son, Jesus Christ (John 3 :16). By accepting Jesus Christ's sacrifice on the cross as payment for all our sins, turning away from sin with God's help through prayer in Jesus Christ name, and receiving the Holy Spirit, we become transformed, like Christ, to live a sinless life in Heaven (2 Corinthians 3 :18) (Romans 12:2). Here's a link to an interview of Dr. Ruth Kastner PhD.; philosopher at physics department at New York State University (who believes 'free will' is real and obeys the laws of quantum physics): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FvW_iZoogDo&t=592s

38. I think it is not that you two are sometimes talking pass to each other, I think you two are talking pass to each other all the time.

39. Here is my conclusion, which both allows free will to exist, and completely refutes the notion of free will, at the same time.

    It is my understanding that we are only the consciousness, and our consciousness is limited in expression by our location in existence.

    First there is reality. Where we are when we observe what is occuring with any and all senses and mental computation. Here in reality, free will does not exist at all.

    Second there is existence itself, which is constituted of infinite parallel realities in infinite dimensions.

    Here by dimension I do not simply mean locations in space and time, but every single possible variable, from a state of mind, to the color of a rock.

    As consciousness we have free will to move through dimensions to parallel realities, which we experience as one fluid existence, and wheresoever we meet conscious entities, we are at that precise moment, sharing a reality, and should we look back on our path, it would appear to have all occured in a single reality, and under that viewpoint, everything is perfectly deterministic by a casual chain of events, and in that singular reality this holds true, but we hop realities constantly with every moment, by free will, which can only be understood in this broader tapestry, as no known physical law pushes us about.

    To chase the rabbit further, perhaps even here free will is an illusion as we will no doubt always find ourselves drawn to different experiences in existence, as too much of the same becomes boring, and we are all slaved to the cycle of change well portrayed by things such as the Tao symbol of Yin and Yang.

40. As for this podcast, Sam Harris, the reason you are talking past Dan here so often, is because you are talking on a higher level. All that I can glean from this podcast is that, while Dan has wealth of knowledge, he has a great failure of imagination, and is quite frankly, an old fool. He has some great points, but fails to see your own. His greatest point is that a line must be drawn somewhere, and all that falls behind that line can be said to be too complex to hold responsible under pragmatic use of the notion of free will, but your strong counterpoint is that this line is not rigid, but depends upon our understanding of each case individually. Of course the strongest point is that 100% of factors in any and all cases weighs in on the No Free Will side, and your comparison of compatibilism to religion is spot on in the sense that it is an ever receding front in the face of facts/knowledge/truth/understanding.

41. Is there a pill for Dennett syndrome? "I'm a hot-headed, Latin-type…" That tells me as much as I think I need to know about Dennett. It is clear to me we need to stop lying to people about free will. It is actually pragmatic for society to do so.

42. Something new and radical occurred to me a few days ago… I, like you, thought that hard determinism or randomness were the only two games in town and freewill died at the hands of either… I could find nor see any third option… however it I suddenly saw it… Emergence! When two things have never ever come together before, what happens when they meet cannot be in anyway shape or form, not even in principle be predicted because what emerges from this initial meeting has no precedent and no known means of judging until it actually occurs. For non-living entities there seems to be a very certain pattern that repeats whenever these previously unpredictable things meet, like salt or water… but for humans there are no fixed singular outcomes, there is at bare minimum two possibilities for each agent… do something or do nothing. A real time decision making is required by both agents with nothing prior necessitating either choice… While the outcome still obeys all known laws of physics, the fact that the X factor of selfwareness and self interest exists for living agents and not for any known computer, grants what most consider freewill.

43. How come Harris is the only person who always seems to end up in conversations where he claims he is talking past other people. What a strange pattern where Harris can't have a constructive conversation with a single person with a different view. I wonder why every single person with a different view to you just can't understand what you are talking about and talks past Harris? I've listened to this a few times already and I still feel like Harris didn't answer any of the points raised by Dennet.

44. happy birthday Carol

45. I think the problem is compatibilists can't get together and choose a definition for free will, everyone has their own idea of what a definition should be, and yeah, it's fun to think about definitions, but while they think about it, christian still think libertarian free will is real.

46. If this comment section was from Dennett's longstanding podcast the overall sentiment would be reversed. I believe they both made good points but didn't have the time to really delve into the issue enough for me to pass judgement on who "won".

47. Both of these individuals have produced some remarkable work. Here, however, I'm inclined to agree with Harris' opening remarks regarding 'talking past one another'. The conversation was interesting if only that it introduces (to me) the phrase 'brain tumors all the way down'.

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