I don’t think any scientist, no matter how reasoned, could adequately answer this question – because it’ll boil down to semantics over the definition of “free will”, then devolve into solipsism. A better headline would be something like: “Renowned biologist argues his belief in lack of free will.”
and that is why math theorem starts with definitions of the terms.
Free will is often defined as the capability to have done otherwise.
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Punitive justice may not make sense without free will, but restorative and preventative justice still does.
If someone kills a bunch of people no amount of philosophical quibbling and defining is going to make me think that person should be allowed to continue living in society, justice simply couldn’t be a concept at all in the absence of some form of free will
Wouldn’t it require an act of free will to decide that the murderer had no free will and therefore shouldn’t be jailed? If we have no free will and are always acting in response to that complex array of dominos, then the judge and jury sending the murderer to prison have the same amount of choice as the murderer.
That would be correct, the judge and jury have no more choice than the murderer, which is none. Hypothetically, the appearance of choice doesn’t mean there is choice or free will. As a slightly tortured analogy, like “perfect” loaded dice, which appear that they could be anything but always give the same result.
Ultimately this a definition issue, and is philosophical more than scientific. I have no doubt he’s a great neuroscientist, but it’s really not a great take. I think that the whole idea of neurochemistry cascading into the decisions we make doesn’t mean we don’t have the ability to choose within our neurochemical makeup. I think it definitely pushing a good point in that the root causes of our behavior, especially anti-social behavior, is possibly addressable in how we support and raise our kids.
What would evidence of free will look like?
I think the only reason there is “debate” is that free will is so intuitive and needed to justify institutions like the church and the current state of the justice system.
If you parse a lay description of free will, it’s clear from a 1980s biology perspective, that free will is an illusion. “I chose to pick up the pen” is how our brain rationalize our actions. A better sentence would be “My brain decided to pick up the pen and it made sense to do so in retrospect and I passively observed this process”.
As most who have already commented here, I’m somewhat unimpressed (and would expect more analytical subtlety from a scientist). Wittgenstein already fully dissected the notion of “free will”, showing its semantic variety of meanings and how at some depth it becomes vague and unclear. And Nietzsche discussed why “punishment” is necessary and makes sense even in a completely deterministic world… Sad that such insights are forgotten by many scientists. Often unclear if some scientists want to deepen our understanding of things, or just want sensationalism. Maybe a bit of both…
Scientists can have opinions and beliefs. A news organization encouraging it as being a scientific conclusion only because it comes from a scientist is really the issue here.
it’s insane to me that someone could understand the ramifications of trauma on neurobiology and conclude that free will doesn’t exist
i feel like, without free will, no one would ever escape their trauma. without saying something shitty and uncompassionate like “you’re only held back by your trauma because you’re not strong willed enough”; that’s not true at all
but i think, at it’s core, healing from trauma requires two things: a person who you feel safe enough to trust, and the willingness to take the leap and trust again
if you don’t have one or the other, you’re going to really struggle
and that moment where you choose to trust, how can you see that as anything but free will? when everything about your past, your nerves, your biology is screaming at you to do otherwise?
i dunno. i don’t think any of us would have grown past our trauma at all without free will
that said, i think there’s also just too much going on in the brain to conclude there’s no free will for sure. i guess that’s not the same as saying it’s deterministic, which you can’t really say, because physics gets too fucking weird at low levels, right?
anyways, i guess we can never really definitively say whether free will exists or not. but i think you can still make very strong arguments for being compassionate to poor people / traumatized people / people with mental illness / etc without saying we all don’t have free will. it feels a lot like saying we’re all doomed to be what we were made to be and we can’t make a better life for ourselves
it just starts with convincing people, and believing, that we all deserve that
and that moment where you choose to trust, how can you see that as anything but free will?
We don’t really know why one person chooses and the other one doesn’t. It could be genetic, history, chance. If free will exists and includes any of those then it isn’t 100% free will.
yeah no, my post is closer to “there’s more than 0% free will” than “there’s 100% free will”. i definitely know too much about trauma to think it’s 100%. but trauma get so deeply ingrained, and it’s so cyclical; that anyone can break free, seems nothing short of miraculous to me. to me, if we had no free will, that would never happen
Literally every week: We just did a study that proves free will doesn’t exist
Marx: For fuck sake.
Context
Dialectical materialism is the idea that your mind impacts the world as the world affects your mind. This means that while you are free to make decisions they are going to be influenced by the world around you. Under this, free will is equal parts your own actions and the actions of those around you. Liberalism (the ideology we live under today) uses a system called Idealism which is where your mind is the only thing that determines the outcome of an event, and opposite of that is Nihilism where all of your decisions are made for you. Because of decades of anticommunist propaganda, basic truths of scientific socialism are so buried that even scientists are unable to see basic truths staring them in the face, instead finding understanding in unscientific philosophy. If even one had knowledge of his work, they wouldn’t have made such a huge and obvious blunder.
This wasn’t a study and nobody has proven free will one way or another, the issue remains heavily semantic.
