Do We Have Free Will? | 5 Minute Video
Do humans have free will or are our decisions entirely products of chemistry, physics, and genetics? Is there a difference between the brain and the mind? Could a neuroscientist with enough knowledge of our brains know every decision that we’ll make? The answers to these questions cut to the heart of what it means to be human.
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Script:
In the external, or physical, world, we’re all aware of standard cause and effect, right? You know, “Object A acts upon Object B with Force X.” We all get that, because it applies to just about everything — from electrons to athletes.
But now consider events in your internal, or mental, world. What causes your thoughts?
Some of our thoughts have external causes, like when we touch something and suddenly realize it’s hot. We don’t deliberate whether or not to pull our hand away, right? Our brain has already fired the instruction to do so — involuntarily. In some strange sense, “we” didn’t really pull our hand away at all — because “we” didn’t choose to do it. Our brain did it before consulting us.
A second cause of our thoughts is internal. Say you’re thinking about giving a big presentation and as you do so, you get increasingly nervous, and your blood pressure and your heart rate jump up. Now, nothing external is acting upon you. You’re doing all the “causing” internally, right? Your anxious thoughts are causing your brain to send signals to your heart, and we get that.
But now, I want you to consider a third category of your thoughts — it’s your conscious choices — something as simple as choosing where to go for lunch.
Now when you introspect, when you think about your thinking, do you believe that you’re the active agent in charge of the process, or that you’re just a passive recipient of the instruction — that you have no choice in the matter, it’s all external forces — be they environmental, genetic, chemical, biological, or neurological?
In other words, do you think all your thoughts have external causes beyond your control, or do you think that you control some, if not most, of your thoughts?
Now let’s stay with our lunch example for a second… back to the question…I ask you “Where do you want to go for lunch today?”
Now, if all you are is a brain, an exhaustively physical system of neurons and synapses, then there’s no “you” that’s gonna be making a “choice” at all. Your thought processes are basically just a complex series of colliding electron-dominos crashing into one another. It’s just physical cause and effect, right — something that can be exhaustively understood in terms of physics and chemistry? There’s no “you” that’s an agent that’s deliberating, or choosing, or exercising free will.
And that’s why, if you are just a brain, you cannot have free will. You would just be a physical machine — a very complex but programmed computer.
But, if you’re something more than your brain — if you’re the thing that has the brain — then, when I ask you “Where do you want to go for lunch?,” you’re going to start deliberating — you’re going to be weighing your taste preferences, the commute time, perhaps even counting calories. You’d be weighing various reasons to choose one place over another. You wouldn’t be caused to think about any of these things. You would choose to think about these things, and you could stop anytime you wanted to.
So, what we have here, therefore, are two different types of things: an immaterial mind and the material brain. You are the thing that has the brain — you are not your brain.
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Curiously, materialism is often embraced by pro-choice and transgenderism defenders. Is it just me or it sounds like a contradiction? As they say, one can’t have a cake and eat it, too.
4:31 If free will is a myth, then so is democracy. And THIS is the conservative rhetoric that confuses the people. Regardless if you are right-wing or left-wing, we should all be protective of democracy. It is safe to say that this video has more to say about what a human SHOULD do versus what a human could do. Conservatism limits the brain 🤣🤣 .
1:06 That's called the autonomic nervous system reaction. As this is a biological function of the brain, the symptoms one may feel from these involuntary experiences may very well influence the outward behaviors. This leaves room for choice. The choice is a part of free will.
Didn’t conservatives coin facts don’t care about your feelings
Do we have COMPLETE control of the events and outcomes of our lives?
If we do have said control, how "accidents" happen to sweep our feet in life even though we did good choices to negate bad outcomes? Also, why we struggle to rationally fight against desires that comes from ourselves (Lust, fear of missing something, greed)?
Truth is (harsh for some and ok for others): We don't.
We are like characters in a book or an algorythm inside a big system in which both cases, has a ending already set.
This is one of the most logical reflections on Intelligent design (God is an Author).
Is the Author good or evil for making things as they are? My honest answer would be that he only made a story/system for his own pleasing and that is totally fair, it's his own work.
Free will must be taught to create self awareness
God knows everything, i.e knows what is determined, therefore giving rise of the determined, this is referenced several times in the bible, so it's really a lose-lose situation anyways, if you had to pick between the two
If we don't, then why ask?
We have no free will
Yet our unfree will has taught us to believe it and it works for our conscious being.
Its not bad to not accept reailty if our reality to deny it makes a difference.
If believing in free will works better than not so , than it works better.
That has the reality of unfree will gave us as a gift to believe in it in order to survive as conscious beings to survive.
Therefore in the sake of saving consciousness made humanity
Believe in free will. Reality can confront reality and make a difference that is good. Creativity would die out in our world just as the unconscious world would kill off its own consciousness
Cuz No matter how often the world reality kills our reality through realization, its will grows each own back because of the reality.
We are sometimes idiots in order to be human .
A mind is immaterial in the same way a poker round is immaterial. The players, the cards, the table: none of those are a poker round. The "poker round" is an immaterial concept, it's a formalized activity. An activity the physical humans play with physical cards around a physical table in a formalized way, getting the emergent property of "poker round". The same with mind, an activity of our brain. No need to go supernatural on that.
There's a free will so far as we're above the nature as human beings, or have the self-consciousness, with knowledge about right and wrong, to know the consequences of our decisions, and make choices, but considering that our mind is limited, so part of our decisions is still controlled by our instinct, or the group-spirits, depending on how mature we're as individuals, and so our free will is limited, or different for each individual.
So… When does he give a real argument?
As far as scientists and buffoons alike can show, all components of decision-making are either based on cause and effect, or random. Allowing for a combination of both. Any other option, the thing this muppet is arguing for, is nothing but dogmatic faith-based religious wishful thinking.
Baby girl did you forget that your consciousness isn't the only part of you as a person?
A decent explanation until you tried to explain why people believe in determinism. You’re essentially saying people are lying to themselves about free will to avoid accepting it. That’s disingenuous.
if you take any partical and put it in a computer than you can know what it would be in the future as a system, but acording to the uncertainty principle it can fail because it may not work acording to logic so it may be impossible.
Is PragerU controlled opposition to give easy wins to their critics? I can’t really imagine how this video would be different if it was designed intentionally as fodder for other people to react to and call dumb.
Good explanation
Isn't this guy a senator from Pennsylvania now?
This argument is invalid and is framed in an emotionally charged way. Your choices are a product of your wants. You can not determine your wants. Try to make yourself stop wanting something. It's impossible. You want what you want and there's nothing you can do to change that unless you're granted additional information that makes you stop wanting it. If I'm asked where I want to go eat lunch, I'll base my choice off my wants…which are beyond my control. Additionally, I can alter someone's personality by making changes to their brain. Indeed, we've seen massive changes to people who have undergone brain surgery, brain injury, or been placed on certain medications. These personality changes cause huge shifts in behavior and ultimately choices that people make. Freewill is an illusion.
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