The Changing Nature of Free Will

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00:01:53 All right. Your left ear.

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00:03:02 It's enjoyable. Brigot where is your work primarily on?

00:03:32 I mean you know that is the mysterious thing. It's on Bible. So I'm not assistant. So you [Music] know this Oh no. Okay. Yeah. Hold on. Yeah. I'm uh as soon as I turn my head it's kind of Yeah. Can we move it?

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00:05:34 Nice to meet you. I'm at Virginia Tech right now. Yeah, we have a at a new biomedical research institute. We so so I look uh at human choice behavior how you know the neuroscience behind behaviors that we express when we're making choices both how we represent problems but then also how we evaluate that in the next

00:06:06 that's right okay so further down the line Um so I'm actually I'm a trained neurobiologist. I've done work with parts of the brain work down to mental level. And now in humans we use uh different kinds of modalities where we can measure brain activity while people are making choices. So now is this connected to um neural networks at all? A bit. Yeah. So so actual ones

00:06:37 versus the computational ones. Yeah. Yeah. Actual neural networks versus algorithmic ones. Yeah. Right. correct me if I'm wrong. The conclusion is conclusion and

00:07:17 I never got I

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00:09:37 for one of those. Yeah. It gives me a chance to see how good they are. Okay.

00:10:10 [Music] When I move, my ear will leave with me with it. Okay, we're going to get started. Okay, thanks. We're going to get started now. My name is Rob Penszer. I'm the associate director of the Helix Center. I have a few announcements of upcoming programs before we get to today's John Templeton Foundation sponsored roundt. Uh next I'm sorry,

00:10:42 Saturday May 2nd we have trauma and its after effects. It will be a two-part series and the first part is on war and genocide. We'll have historian Adam Saxs, multimedia director and publicist Gotfrieded Vagner, psychoanalyst Ava Wy and journalist Phil Zabriski. On Saturday, May 16th, humans and animals continuities and discontinuities with mindbody investigator Theodore Diamond Jr., animal cognitive scientists Irene Pepperberg, and Diana Ree, and others. I

00:11:15 also wanted to alert you to the upcoming Helix Center annual benefit dinner, which will take place Friday evening, May 8th. Information and tickets uh are available through the Helix Center website at www.helixcenter.org or and uh please follow us on Facebook and Twitter and uh tweet generously. So today's uh roundt the changing nature of free will uh there are more extensive uh biographies than the introduction I'll provide they're on

00:11:46 your handouts and also on the website but as I introduce each of the participants if he or she can raise your uh the audience will identify you. Akquil Bilgrai is the Sydney Morgan Besser Professor of Philosophy at Columbia University. His main areas of research are philosophy of mind and languageology and political philosophy. He's the author of three books, belief and meaning, self-nowledge and resentment and secularism, identity and

00:12:16 enchantment. He is currently writing a book on the nature of value, practical reason and agency. Lewis Cavalro is the Pegnelli Bull Professor of Econ economics and International Business at NYU's Stern School of Business. His research focuses on the dynamics of firm competition both from the antitrust and from the strategy perspectives. His research topics include reputation, learning, network effects, sunk costs, innovation, strategic risk choice. In addition to numerous journal articles, he is the author of Introduction to Industrial

00:12:47 Organization. Brigitta Khal is a professor of New Testament at Union Theological Seminary in New York and associate professor at the religion department at Colombia. A biblical scholar with strong interdisciplinary and ecological leanings. A major focus of her recent work has between New Testament and Roman Empire especially with regard to the letters of Paul. She's the author of numerous articles and several books including Galatians Reimagined Reading with the Eyes of the Vanquished. Ken Kashida is a research scientist in

00:13:19 the computational psychiatry unit at the Virginia Tech Cur Currillion Research Institute. He investigates neurobiological processes underlying human choice behavior using computational approaches paired with measurements of behavior and associated neural activity such experiments designed to expose how the brain encodes computations important for adaptive choice behavior. And Simon Koshan is professor emeritus and senior research scientist in the mathematics department of Princeton University. A recipient of the Frank Nelson Cole Prize in number theory of

00:13:49 the American mathematical society. His interests lie in mathematical logic, number theory, and quantum mechanics. His work on the foundation of quantum mechanics includes the paper with Ernest Spectre, I'm sorry, Specker on the Koshan Specker paradox and with John Conway on the free and now to our round table. All right. Well, um I have to confess usually when I talk it's with other

00:14:20 neuroscientists. Um not very often with philosophers or or theologians. And so um I know why uh myself and and folks I hire uh the rest of us here are interested in the problem. what what value do you guys have uh placed on this idea? Well, I I don't work exactly on free topics that you heard just before did not include free will and a lot of different things, not this. I think it's

00:14:51 a fascinating topic, one that I'm interested in and I've been reading mostly about even though I don't do a lot of research on um just to get things started. I mean personally I don't think that free will is is per se a proposition that can be proven or disproven. You may disagree from that. I see free will primarily as as as an axiom. you know if there is no free will um then what's my identity ex you know

00:15:21 everything that I do that I think u it's just the result of a temporal events or uh it's totally conditioned by particles or whatever the negation of free will is then I would have no identity and and I cannot I cannot imagine a world where I wouldn't be I So I like to think of free will as an axiom. I think it can be studied maybe can be falsified in some way but I would

00:15:52 rather think about it as an axiom rather than a proposition that we can prove or disprove. Just an idea. So I mean unless someone wants to jump in I'll add a bit to that. Um so so when I've thought about this in the past before I um really pursued uh a role in in science trying to answer these kinds of questions um in that transition I I found that actually the idea of free will um it has this kind of use as a as a belief to to to frame how we do think

00:16:23 about ourselves and how the choices we make um have an impact. Um, but from a scientific perspective, I actually find that it's uh very challenging to use that idea to go in and then study the thing that that that it's trying to capture it. Um, when you get into discussions of free will or consciousness, a lot of it boils down to an hour of trying for everyone involved to to define and talk. But when we're talking about free will, to me, it seems like what it is is we're we're interested in

00:16:54 how humans make choices, right? the choice behaviors that we see, we want to explain when we execute certain action, it has some repercussions. Um, could we have done something different had we been in that moment again? Um, and we want to try and explain that. So, it's it's it's to me it seems like it's a useful idea only to kind of fill in a gap where we haven't really explored it very much. Um and so as a neuroscientist I've been interested in studying choice behavior from a biological standpoint and trying to um what does lead to um

00:17:27 the varieties of choice that we express. Right? So um I wouldn't say that it's free. There's really nothing free about what humans or or any other biological organism does. Everything comes at a cost, right? We we can't go on forever without eating or sleeping or breathing. Um and so those are real constraints on the kinds of choices that we could make and how we can navigate the world. Um on the other hand, as humans, we we seem to gain some control over the environment

00:17:58 so that we can have these luxuries. Um we can sit in a room and talk about things rather than be out hunting and gathering our our resources, shelters, right? Um and so we get this kind of luxury and and and and that expands to lots of other domains where we create some freedom um from our past I guess. So let me just ask you something. Would you agree with the proposition that the only reason why we cannot predict the uh

00:18:29 behavior of a certain agent be it human or non-human is u lack of precision in measurement that one day if we measure uh neurologically with sufficient accuracy uh every single neuron of the human brain be able to model predict behavior. Yeah. So, so, so in some ways, um, we do predict behavior, right? If, um, if I want to make you feel bad, I'll insult

00:19:00 you, right? Or, um, I'll attack you physically, right? Um, and that will have very on how you're going to act with me. Um, I have kids and so when I want them to do certain, I know there's certain strategies that I could use to to interact with them and and others that they won't be very effective. Um, from a scientific standpoint, um, you can put people uh or or pigeons into a Skinner box where they can make choices and you can set up the reward schedule

00:19:32 beh that that they will act actually quite predictably um in some sense it's it's in probabilistic terms right decision decision is not a perfect is that it's probabilistic as you said and rightly so is that error term in your models is that due to measurement error or is it due to something that's inherent to the model that you model that I think is the big philosophical or whatever question about free will is it all a matter of

00:20:03 measurement the only reason why I cannot predict exactly what your the rat or human subject is going to do is that I'm not measuring carefully enough or is there any fundamental if you will of uncertainty which uh cannot be uh properly predicted. So let me uh let me interject here. So uh part of that question is is the uncertainty uh our knowledge of what's

00:20:34 going on as philosophers say epis or is there an an underlying uncertainty? So um well I'm a mathematician and um might ask why I'm here alto together. Uh but um about 8 years ago uh um I proved a result uh together with John Conway at Princeton uh which is a refinement of a much older theorem going back with and a Swiss

00:21:07 mathematician almost 50 years. And the question there is the underlying question is not directly but about the question of determinism in the universe. Is the universe strictly deterministic in in a quite precise way that uh classical physics since Isaac Newton has said that um if you know the state of the never mind no if the state of the universe is

00:21:39 whatever it is at a given time. Classical physics tells you the state of the universe both at any other time both in the future and the past is totally determined. So uh that was started essentially by Isaac Newton in his system of the and um that brings in an old philosophical question that goes back over 2,000 years

00:22:10 between the Stoics and Epicurus and to the Romans with Lucriccius and and Cicero and the more modern version is uh what Hugh whom started and hobbs in the 18th century and it's what's called compatibilism uh by philosophers is free will compatible with such a deterministic picture of the universe. So the contribution that uh

00:22:41 that these theorems make uh that I was talking about is to say that it's pointless to even talk about that because modern physics uh in form of quantum mechanics gives rise to to certain experiments which shows that so quantum mechanics itself if you accept it says that uh even If nicely the state as much as you can what's called a pure state at

00:23:13 the present time for a a closed system like a particle or several then the future you can for the future you can only talk about probabilities for that and if you accept quantum mechanics that's not epistemological. It's not our knowledge. is just an ontological fact that you cannot give that there are probabilities only that you can give. Uh what the theorem that I'm talking about

00:23:43 says is see people didn't like that point of view. Even the founders of quantum mechanics like Shreddinger and Einstein really were not very happy with this whole idea of there being an inherent probability and they um various people have tried to get back to a classical picture which reproduces the but says that these probabilities if you knew the underlying the underlying

00:24:14 states would be just our lack of knowledge of the underlying hidden variables. So an example of biology is we have probabilities attached to uh for in to inherited traits like blue eyes and brown eyes. One knew these probabilities but Mendel introduced a sort of hidden variable namely the gene which nobody knew existed at that time but it explain of

00:24:46 recessive and dominant uh factors. It explained the probabilities very well and eventually they were actually found as as molecules. So people who believe in such hidden variables uh they feel that they might try to explain the probabilities of quantum mechanics in the same way. um this theorem uh I'm not going to make a distinction between of spec and myself and then somewhat improved on and myself says that you

00:25:19 can't quantum mechanics if you try to give a classical explanation of certain experiments that we came up with uh you run simply into a contradiction if you actually want to say what the future state is I can explain this in more detail if people want later but there just are a series of 40 experiments and there which uh which quantum mechanics gives

00:25:50 probabilities for for the outcomes but if you try to give say this is the outcome for this come for this you simply run into a mathematical contradiction so that's that's what the theorem is about is that the whole this argu argument between what I call compatibilists and those who don't who believe compatibilism and free will are in fact they are not compatible that the that that is to say that free will and

00:26:21 uh determinism are incompatible. the incompatibibleists. Uh that that argument is an old-fashioned argument which now since quantum mechanics for almost a hundred years is simply out of date. One doesn't have to talk about this compatibilism because quantum mechanics is a pro inlogically probabilistic theory. says we will never get back to a

00:26:52 classical kind of deterministic universe. Yeah. Um so the the question partly is whether those who believe in free will find comfort in the fact that we move from some level of certainty to predictions that are merely probabilistic. They might say that the real threat to

00:27:26 uh free will is that you should see it as that that human agency is susceptible to prediction even if the prediction is demoted to a probabilistic prediction uh for the reasons that you and others have uh established. So uh here are two questions that that that um seem to suggest that there's a more

00:27:57 principled issue about freedom than than one of whether uh the system this close system is to be seen in probabilistic terms or something uh uh more close to certainty. one is uh to raise the question uh you you see if if it is the case that all laws even in Newton's um uh

00:28:28 mechanics laws presumably come with uh keter parabus clauses with all things being equal clauses right what in Latin is called keras parabus clauses you that is you hold certain steady. So, uh you can predict so long as certain conditions are met, right? So, there's a a clause which says it's as it were looking out for things that allow for exceptions and saying those mustn't arise. Those conditions mustn't arise. Now the

00:29:00 trouble with human behavior is that if we were tempted to say that certain intentions uh and choices and preferences um if one were tempted to say that their laws either probabilistic uh or more definite forms of law. uh if one were tempted to say their laws would say if you made certain choices or had certain preferences you would act in such and

00:29:31 such way. The trouble is when we try and say what has to be in a keter parabus clause it's just about everything right I mean if I say if and I believe that that water will quench my thirst and so I predict that I will if I have that thirst and that belief I will drink that water that could go that prediction could be falsified by just about

00:30:02 anything, right? Why am I being too lazy to pick it up? Why am I being too busy talking to pick it up? Why am I preferring orange juice to drinking that? It could be just about anything. So, what has to be held steady? When one says, "All things being equal, I will drink that water if I have that visit." We have no xanti hold over all that has to be held steady. But if you compare what is to be held steady say in the law of falling bodies in Newton you can exanti state in a very general way what

00:30:33 is to be held steady and that's part of the problem that you were raising. We have no all the all things being equal clauses as it were have to come exposed. We can't ex anti say what has to be held steady. I think that's part of the problem. Isn't that the promise of neuroscience that we will be able to control that? I mean, if you get down to the really uh nitty-gritty of neurological activity that eventually if you measure sufficiently well, you should be able to

00:31:05 control for all of those conditions. You know, your past behavior, your state of the state of the world could also be the state of your mind in measured in some precise way, right? You could do that but by changing the subject. that is you you couldn't do it with the vocabulary of orange juice, thirst and so on. You'd have to do it with the vocabulary of neurohysiological states, right? So in a sense you change you can do that by a reductive change of the

00:31:37 subject, right? You can't do it with the vocabulary of beliefs, desires, preferences, etc. You you you can talk about brain states and then the question arises well we wanted a prediction with this vocabulary you've given us a prediction in a different vocabulary and that really is in a way the mindbody problem and it seems it seems like some of the the resistance to that change in vocabulary is that it's not the vocabulary that we use dayto-day right and the value from what I understand

00:32:08 about free will we're not so concerned about whether whether or not our pet dog has free will. We want we care about whether or not other humans have free will because when they do we either don't accept or or that we want to support. We want to assign them credit or not. Um and and there's I think good evidence that this is something that that's very important to our species. It's something that's evolved and in how we process information about others. It's how we organize in small groups but then also bigger structures. So if you change the

00:32:40 vocabulary to a biological one or a neurohysiological one um there's a a worry that that then um uh the whole social structure which is built on this other language will will collapse and and actually what's going to happen exceptions uh based on what we understand from from medicine and neurobiology right so whe whether it's legal or whether it's interpersonal if if a person um has a particular psychiatric condition and it causes them

00:33:10 to act in certain ways um treated or untreated uh we don't treat them the same way uh as a society as someone who who does not have that that condition right um and that's true in in in many cases so um just because you can make um it doesn't seem to remove agency um it doesn't seem to remove control in fact actually I think it actually enhances improv provides more control. Um, as we start to understand where

00:33:41 these constraints uh come from u from our biology, our our environment, uh, the interactions we have, once we recognize that they are constraints, we could do things as a society, we can make choices to to remove them, right? To to make things more equal, a more level playing field. Um and so in some sense by by changing the language, learning what is or is not predictable, um we're actually gaining more control. Um so so wait, so that that makes it sound as if the more determined we are

00:34:12 and the more knowledge we have of the determining factors, the more free we are as we come to understand that. So so uh I'm not sure if you're making, but it's as though as we learn about it, we be right. So, so I guess what I'm saying is that there are forces that we're completely unaware of in our biology and in our environment that have impacts on the way we make decisions. Right. Right. Now, but but I thought your point was that once we come to know more about those determining factors, we

00:34:45 actually agentive control and therefore are more free. Yes. So, so, so there's nothing more free is different from completely free. Okay. But more more control, more choice. There's an air of paradox in that, isn't it? that usually we thought agency was threatened by determinism and you're suggesting agency is enhanced by determinism so long as knowledge of the

00:35:15 so so uh if we're going from determinism to completely free will or some version of compatibilism um that is not the language that that I'm I actually find useful to talk about these things from a from a uh from the work that I do in the way that I approach these problems. Um, I can make observations. I can control certain experimental settings and and I can make measurements um and generate models for what I might expect to the future. So, so generating essentially scientific beliefs, right? Um, when we

00:35:48 talk about free will and when we get really heated debates over that, what we're actually talking about is human behavior. when we see others and and so so in the space of of trying to explain human behavior we can learn more is guiding that I I agree with you that if we if we know more about what determining our behavior we do in a sense become more

00:36:19 liberated because we know we know what the knowledge of said the knowledge of necessity is actually a liberating thing. But here here's the the interesting uh it's really very fascally a paradox which is that what you say is absolutely right. the more the more we find out about so so if I'm angry and I've figured out what exactly the wellsp springs of my anger are I have more

00:36:51 anger that's that's the point that spinozu is making but here's fascinating thing that is true only if it is peace meal is if it's peace meal there is something which when it's small right my anger or some particular thing, one thing or the other. But if one had nothing but the perspective of seeing oneself say as a psychoanalyst sees one right just in a detached way, if one

00:37:23 made that thing comprehensive, we would have no agency. So the very thing which when read small is liberating in just the way you describe if you just blow it up to say make it a comprehensive thing saying well we can just see all our behavior past present and future well that's the end of agency. Well, it it creates an interesting question, I think, about agency, right? Where where does that begin and end? What are those boundaries, right? So, from a biological

00:37:54 perspective, um an organism has physical boundaries. Um but but that's different from I think the agency that you're talking about. So, so or the sense of it, right? So, so um while I uh exist in the body that I walk around in, um I interact with people and and exchange information either consciously um but also quite implicitly. Um you know, just being in a room full of of of folks or or being in

00:38:25 a conversation, um your brain is processing this information in ways that's guiding how you're going to behave in ways that you're not necessarily aware of. Um and so uh for uh an observer of an agent in that kind that context, our readout of their agency is is really based on their behavior, right? It always comes back to um one brain or one system looking at another uh system and um trying to determine who is the agent, right? But

00:38:57 but the the the hard question is what goes on when one is observing oneself. Mhm. Right. So, and but I was of course if you observe and study yourself, you will get more control of yourself in the future. But if you do nothing, if you have no other point of view on yourself but that of detached observation, right? Then you've gotten rid of agency. So there must be some other perspective you have on yourself over and above a detached study of

00:39:28 yourself. That is what everyone means by freedom. Sure. I mean iterating into your to your area. Well, it's it's quite fascinating to listen to all that and uh trying to translate it into the wi which I am working and I am just noticing that the the same problems but in a different key have been

00:39:59 thisology through out the centuries. And um it is so interesting and this reasons why I really thought I should come here and just listen to you and see where we are in that and so this big kind of paradoxic juosition between determinism on the one hand. So things are determined and in theology of course we say there is this supreme being called God the deity that that has created

00:40:30 everything and has is kind of sovereign I mean has sovereignty over things that happened. So that is the kind of person who distincts us or destins us or kind of is the kind of determinating force. And then on the other hand of course we also need free will you know because if everything is already set by God then what the hell are we doing? And how come that there is a judgment or that there

00:41:01 is repentance that we can change that there is conversion and and all these things that there is this constant appeal to our moral agency or kind of spiritual agency to to change who we are and and I think I have never worked on free will because I always thought this is a kind of a dead end discussion because theologians have kind constantly been in battle about that. I mean you know you have two positions. One kind of camp

00:41:34 says and they are often well the heretics. They said there is free will even after the fall of Ed of Adam and Eve in paradise. Um you still can do good. And then there's the other position that says no we cannot do good. And when you were talking I just about my decisions and thinking about what I am doing. I just was kind of thinking of Paul who said, "Oh, I'm miserable. I'm such a miserable being because I

00:42:04 constantly do what I not want." You know, I know what is good. I know what I want to do. But how come that I constantly do the opposite? You know that is, you know, my my freedom is restricted. And why is my freedom restricted? And then there is this big term sin. I'm in bondage. I'm kind of I'm I see the things I would like to do but I don't do them because a novel law is at work in my limbs in my hand than

00:42:37 what my mind tells me. So and then Paul says you know but there is a way out of that and here is the question how kind of theologians are asking them where are we going with that? What is at stake in this debate? Is at stake I eat eggs or bacon for breakfast or is this choice or is something else at stake? Can we can we can we do can we make even keep the

00:43:10 world in a state that it is livable for example or are we kind of um doomed to turn it into hell that I think this is the theological question. So, do we have the agency to do good or are we all under the spell of evil? And this is why I'm so interested in in listening to neuroscience and to quantum mechanics. I think there are is this kind of on the one hand we are for far more determined

00:43:43 than we think we are and on the other hand there is a space of freedom. I mean this is what I hear you two say and um do I hear you wrong or is I mean I think it's interesting um we ask um the question of of this this force that's pushing us forward and and and it also speaks I think um this where is where where is agency so agency free will these are ideas that seem to be very useful to us as human beings right

00:44:16 it's something that we do care a lot about. We spend a lot of cycles thinking about um from a biological perspective. There is a lot at stake and it's it's the survival of our species and that's always been the case and that's true for for any species on this planet. It's always been about the survival of the species and so there are uh things that that will promote the survival and things that that will demote that. um and and uh evolution by natural selection would say that that

00:44:46 basically you um that which which survives wins. So there there's no really otherction on it that those ideas or or those things that support the survival of the species onto the next stage and the next generation um are fit. And so um I'd actually propose a compromise between what some popular scientists uh view on religion um and what religion's role has been in in for for humanity is that

00:45:16 um there has uh it's it's been a useful idea. It helps organize our day-to-day where we fit in in the world. Um if it wasn't useful to us as a species, it would have been dropped long ago, right? We would have all past that. We haven't done that. We we hang on to these ideas of of being an agent or having free will um or or or all kinds of narratives and science is its own narrative based on um experimentation, empirical thought. So you think that's also true for free will as a um an instrument for moral agency

00:45:50 that's necessary for living in society? I I think I think I think it's something that we hang on to as a species because it is useful. Um, at some point it occurred to me personally, well, what if I didn't have free will? College student, I was I was thinking, well, either I have free will or I don't. Well, what if I don't? Well, whether I do or don't, my life doesn't really change. I can't really change my behavior in any other way, right? So, so, so the choices I make are the choices I make. I'm chasing some uh

00:46:22 value uh for every choice. um and kind of letting go of that idea and looking to to other ways to explain my behavior or others behavior uh became more interesting. Um but there's all kinds of ideas that I think that that um you know that do carry some value to us and and where that comes from where that value comes from that's that's an open question I think but um I mean I this uh I I think it's hard to deny what you're saying but I'm

00:46:53 wondering if the term useful is the right term that I'm I'm my all my instincts are to say that there's something [Music] more lofty about the norm which says we can't we ought not to shed the concept of human freedom not not that just that it's useful but we ought not to. So I have a

00:47:28 loftier sense of the norm than the norms of utility. Uh I mean one one way to ask the question which um which your work uh establishes that there is a notion of free uh there's there's a falsity about determinism uh in in the way you've in the move from uh Newtonian mechanics to to contemporary physics. Um, one thing we might ask is what is

00:48:00 the location for the idea of norms or the usefulness of the notion of agency, which is partly what you were saying too. And so here's here's a very simple question. Suppose you did something suppose X did something very harmful because delightful sake or or for personal gain or something like that right and somebody else say why did the

00:48:31 same harmful thing because he was forced to do it say physically forced or somebody put a machine gun to his head and said do it or I'll shoot you. So X and Y do exactly the same thing. It's a bad thing. X does it because he wants to do it, wants some gain from it, etc. Y does it because somebody's just forced him to do it, say physically. Now we will never give up the

00:49:02 distinction between these two people. However much we find out about the brain, whatever we find out, all the things that that you know that uh these current, you know, uh is it Libé? How do you pronounce his name? Libbe. Lebe and others have done. Let's say they're all right. Right. All of this neuroscience establishes this. Will we ever give up the distinction between X and Y?

00:49:33 Really? That's an I think that's an empirical question, right? That's something. So So empirical in the sense that No, I'm suggesting we ought not to give up the distinction. So I'm denying it's an empirical question. I'm saying it's a normative question. We should never we should not give up. We should say somebody who was forced to do it should be treated differently from somebody who did it. Sir Now that so so just for I do agree with you. I I also share that belief that we ought not uh

00:50:03 abandon that distinction. Okay. But when I say that it's empirical um say uh for simplicity sake there's two halves of the population. One half of the population believes that we should remove that distinction and the other half thinks that we ought not. Um and then there's there's changes in the environment that there there's um grand scale forces in the environment that change whether it's societal level or or whatnot. um holding one belief or the other is beneficial to the species. Um then then

00:50:37 it'll be determined at that point in time. Uh which uh basically wins out, right? I mean so so it's it's it's kind of a a very abstract idea of whether or not we should maintain this distinction about responsibility for actions. Um but if it's not a useful idea that that promotes um the genes that we carry um then I would say that that it's empirical in that sense that the evolutionary forces and kind of going forward in time will determine that for us. Um now to go back to I do agree with you

00:51:08 that that that we ought not lose that distinction and I think part of that is is um it's come from our past. there might have been a period in time where where we couldn't make that distinction, right? And then there's cases in in the court system where we're not really clear who's actually the the causitive agent, whether it's a person or the person that's been manipulated. Um, and we struggle with assigning that. To me, it's it's u first of all, when you say species, you you mean the human species. So, but

00:51:40 what about all the part of us that is very similar in terms of behavior to animals? What what do you say to that? And are you saying that free will is a property of being part of the human species only in the sense that that that humans care about it, right? It's a belief or it's an idea that humans discuss and and debate over. Um there's actually becomes from what Akil said becomes more immoral. What you said has

00:52:11 a moral connotation that's also something that that the human species uniquely cares about. Right. So so um these are ideas that are very important to us and they're probably important to us for a very good reason and there's a reason that we don't want to let go of them because when we do the structure of our society would likely fall apart. It would just be very different. We we wouldn't be human anymore. It's part of I think how we identify ourselves as as being human. But I think what Simon said you would not your your your proposal your proposition doesn't only humans.

00:52:45 Well, we're talking Yes. So, we're talking about determinism and then we have to talk about free will. Um now my own feeling is that compatibilism really doesn't make a lot of sense that if things are determined totally and that applies to the exactly to the where it's no different than being coerced from the outside is if everything is determined you can't make

00:53:17 that distinction between the two two cases that you talked about. So I I really think that question is is is is so let me make a a point here about um um is it really possible to get rid of determinism in an absolute way. You see uh these theorems that I was talking about they're saying that the a

00:53:48 classical theory which is deterministic uh that that doesn't hold water anymore because of say these experiments I was these 40 experiments but you see a classical theory is not simply telling it's a scientific theory is not history. It tells you, it gives you general laws and tells you uh whatever the state is,

00:54:18 it'll tell you what happens afterwards. And if it's classical, it tell you in a deterministic theory if I lift this up say 9 ft to know that if I it should take 3/4 of a second to fall. That's not magic. It just follows a well-known law that u if you remember your high school physics it's that the height the s is equal to 16 t^2

00:54:52 uh where in feet and seconds and if I put in for the height of 9 ft then I get 9 over 16 and it's I get 3 over4 now to know that is interesting perhaps but that's not what scientific theories are about. I also want to know if I lift it up 16 feet then it's going to take a full second by using the it's the law and how that

00:55:22 works under different conditions that that tells me this and this theorem I was talking about that classical physics doesn't work is of this type it you have to know that uh no matter what possibility suppose somebody says yes well I'll tell you um in one of these 40 a particular one of these 40 experiments and uh I'll I'll

00:55:53 I'll be right perhaps but I said no you have to tell in all of these now that's what physics to predict is supposed to predict different things but suppose uh somebody says I'm not interested in scientific theories I believe in a a being who's precient. It doesn't have to be omnipotent, but he has to be present. He has to tell you what happens in the

00:56:24 future. And I say, well, this experiment says you won't be able to predict. He says, no, this being doesn't have to predict everything. He'll tell you that you have to this thing in particular this experiment and that experiment I'll tell you what it is. So you see can't act this theorem doesn't act against a precient being who who tells you what the actual

00:56:55 trajectory of the world is. Scientific theories don't tell you the actual trajectory. They tell you the possible trajectory starting from any particular state and that's very different. See, so this theorem that I was talking about can't can't argue directly against this kind of precience. In order to do that, I would have to put in a little bit of my own free will. Namely, these 40

00:57:26 experiments uh correspond to one of 40 buttons I pick. You have to give me, you know, when you have to give me the free will to press one of these 40 buttons or some electromagnet changes in direction and then with that even a precient person not cannot predict all the 40 or he get into a mathematical contradiction. See, there is no absolute proof that that

00:57:59 determinism doesn't work. Let let me let me uh give you a a more homely example. You know, when I was young, I I I was growing up in England, I loved movies and uh I went once each week and one day I saw a movie I really liked, Casablanca. I think you all know the movie. And at movie Rick Humphrey Bogart has two letters of transit for getting

00:58:31 out of uh out of Casablanca to the free world. And there are three people there. Ingred Bergman, the love of his life and her husband who's a freedom fighter. the question that that Humphrey Bogart has to make answers which one of the two is he going to give the transit of. So I mean I didn't know which one he was going to choose. It really was a question and of course we know he does the noble thing. I'm not giving anything

00:59:03 away at this point I think. And he he allows the Ingred Bergman the husband to leave. He joins the free French with Claude Reigns the Vichy police captain who they now join the free French at the beginning of a beautiful friendship. So that's the story. By the way afterwards it really was a free will decision because the script writers had couldn't decide which way to end and then finally decided on

00:59:33 this. What I want to say is this. I like the movie so much I went to see it next week with a friend of mine. He had never seen it and he had the same thing. Humphrey Bogart has a free will decision. Right. He didn't have a free will decision. This was the second showing. Right. So he couldn't he had to make that. Now my point is this. You know, here's the universe and you know, there's a was a

01:00:05 famous mathematician at the Institute for Advanced Study. And aside from his his work in logic, heivity also was a friend of Einstein and in his usual quirky way, he found a solution to the relativistic equations, which is a cycle. That is to say the universe completely repeats itself. Now that's a possibility then. So here's the universe. Maybe there is free will in

01:00:37 maybe not. But in the second showing there cannot be any free will. Right? So this sort of logical possibility shows you cannot get away with proving that you know you cannot get away from proving that determinism you know that determinism can't work. This shows that you know that deter that in the second showing everything is totally determined because it happened the same way as just like in the movie right

01:01:09 so you have to give is no it's it's a little like um solopsism there is no absolute logical proof that says that you aren't just a figment of my imagination you know you tried to surprise me and this and at but of course you happen in and we know there is such a model because when I go to bed at night I dream and the these people are figments of my

01:01:40 imagination do surprise me and so on so it is a fact that it could be that solopism is a logical it's ridiculous but it's a logical possibility and determinism is exactly the same thing by the second showing it's in my opin and ridiculous. If you ask a child of four or five whether they have free will and I've tried this and they say well of course I have free will but you have to be sophisticated and talk about things

01:02:12 like determinism either from a religious or scientific point of view to start believing that that we aren't all robots and everything is determined. So my point is that uh you know there is no absolute proof of either deter that determinism doesn't work or that solitude for that matter doesn't work. Uh we have so free will and that's the same thing with free will. So actually

01:02:43 that ties in a little bit with what I said earlier that I I like to think of free will as something that's not falsifiable in a scientific way. And therefore there's a sense in which it's more of an axiom than my point is the opposite that you have there is no way of establishing free will absolutely. Oh, I agree with you. And like in this theorem, we have a little bit of free will of pressing one of these 40 buttons. Then I can say that

01:03:15 the whole world is spontane you know that actions of of particles are spontaneous in this sense given given this theorem in quantum mechanics but you have to you there's no absolute proof. You have to put in a you know if somebody says look you're you're assuming free will to prove it. Well, I can say, look, you know, it's like the fisherman. He puts in a minnow and catches a trout and some, "Hey, I saw you put the fish in. What have you done?" You have to assume a little bit

01:03:45 of free will and then the whole world becomes, you know, an arena for free will or even of particles. But, you know, it it has to become simply an axum that free will exists because there's no way of proving it. Absolutely. agree. No, I agree. I mean, may may I go back to to what Ken said before? Yeah. The issue of survival of species and and you kind of made it look pretty easy. I mean, you know, we we do serve our

01:04:19 surv don't. What if we are addicted? And we know that kind of the the kind of the brain chemistry of addiction is a is an interesting thing. What if we are addicted through our whatever what happens in our brain if we like something that actually destroys us. So is isn't that a step further in the debate on free will or not? I mean you know the kind of we all you know we we the way we live is that really conducive

01:04:53 to survival I mean in economy in well in in ecology in in all in politics in all respects I mean so are we and then you know here's again where the theology comes in because you know these people and and I'm just realizing it while listening to our debate here these people have been kind of brutally realistic saying you know we have the bondage of free will. I mean this was one of the big terms in in the 16th

01:05:25 century the bondage of free will versus free will. So that is Arasmus of Rotterdam versus Martin Luther. So they kind of Luther says there is not such a thing as free will only theoretically but practically we are kind of we are in imprisoned in caused by by things we can't control really and and that is what I would call really translation we are addicted to doing exactly what destroys

01:05:57 us. So how do we deal with that? Yeah. So, so, so, so, um, you know, addiction from a medical sense versus for the way you're describing, I think there's a good analogy there, but, but it is a very different thing when we're talking about addiction, of course. Um, but there are certain ideas that we are compelled to, right? So, so, so um, if we all held the exact same idea and it was the wrong idea, that would be detrimental to our species, right? Whether it was an idea or a behavior or or something um, they were expressing. But the but the wonderful thing about

01:06:27 about any species is its diversity, right? And that that's really what protects a species for for future events that um and so um our biology sets us up for us. And and that's not just expressed in in how tall we are or our hair color or or all these other features, but it also expresses itself in our brain structure, which gives rise to our beliefs and and our behaviors. Um having that diversity is really important for any species. And so, um, having this debate and and having, um, ideas kind of develop is is

01:07:01 probably the thing we want to do. We don't want to actually, um, settle on the wrong answer for sure. Um, since we don't know where we're going to find ourselves in the future, but addiction to fossil fuel may have a gene. Yeah, it may. It's true. But you know what I was what I think is is uh when I was saying that it may be a norm, a moral norm that we don't cease to see ourselves as

01:07:34 agents with freedom even in the face even if determinism were established and neuroscience. uh I was really giving a secular version of many of the things you were saying when you talked about good and evil and and so on. So I mean uh that is certainly how a lot of people think of it in theological terms but but you can also just think of it in secular terms and talk of just normative and moral and

01:08:05 so on. So I think we both saying the same things in dramatically different idioms. Um Uh but you know that suggests and I think you want to to say it too partly when you say it's just an axium. It's not the sort of thing that you will allow to be refuted by this thing and and I'm suggesting that the disallowing is a normative stance a moral stance. Uh

01:08:37 so there seems to be some convergence on this and even you agree you you talk of it in terms of usefulness which I've some qual about but but uh but that's a matter of detail. So here's a question which I want to um uh bring in on this. the kinds of things uh uh you were talking about discusses free will at a level of

01:09:07 abstraction. Uh whereas what has been surfing here is that it's a normative notion as well. So maybe we should just say it's an ambiguous notion. I absolutely agree with that. Free will is just an ambiguous notion. So let's say freedom which is studied as a purely metaphysical thing in terms of you know scientific laws what interpretation we give to them and so on that's freedom in its purest most

01:09:40 metaph let's give another name to what has emerged as freedom as a normative stance let's call it shredom right and admit that shrom is the notion that everybody's always been interested in that everybody has always been interested in so so so I would call that choice behavior I I think that's when we talk about free will call it doesn't call it anything you

01:10:12 like the point is it's just two different notions so so my my hesitation to to freedom um versus uh free will um is that that that first of all freedom I wouldn't know where to start with to go looking for what to what to um observe what to what to measure there or or how to even think about that with free will it has um only because we all know that phrase right but if if you know a simplistic

01:10:42 point of view you know the word free has you know six or seven definitions the word will has a dozen you multiply those together I mean you're a whole variety of things that it could possibly mean. And so it is absolutely ambiguous and and um whether it's an axiom or I I think I would actually put it as as a belief. Um it's not as useful to me for for for what I want to do with with whatever it is that we're talking about um to do anything with. What what I'm what I find interesting is that when

01:11:15 we talk about free will, we're not talking about um the behavior of of other organisms except for when the conversation kind of diverges. We're talking about people, right? Um we're talking about human behavior and and how do we make judgments over that behavior? how do we use it, you know, and so um so it, you know, perhaps freedom might be something useful to to to go in that direction and define it specifically. Um but I think whatever that is, it boils for me it

01:11:46 boils back down to how do humans behave? Where do those choices come from? Okay. But do we have a concession from from a neuroscientist? That's what you are, right? Yeah. So do we have a concession from a neuroscientist that all the deliverance research on freedom makes no difference to shredom? I'm not sure what shredded is honest. I mean that if I'm going to commit to something I would want to know you but you you know what freedom is. I got the notion from your

01:12:18 remarks about usefulness and so on with some modifications. I I study human choice behavior. Right. So, so, so no, but you talked about the usefulness of a certain concept which we don't that's so I'm talking so we're talking about a generic concept or the idea. So, I'm talking about what you're talking about. So, you know what I'm talking about? I I guess so. So, let's go with it. So, so, so do we have a concession from somebody who researches a neuroscientist that whatever the deliverances of your

01:12:49 research are, they leave completely untouched. This other thing, call it whatever you like, but you know about it because you raised this concept. You named it. Um, and I would I would not concede as far as the way I am understanding what you're saying. neuroscience research and trying to understand how the brain works and how it gives rise to human behavior um does a lot of things on which we could observe and a lot of the behaviors we observe in humans are expressions of the

01:13:20 beliefs that we carry with us right so so um I'm trying to gather what you might mean by shreom or or some other concept whether it's free will or or something else um and in the spaces where we can agree and do something productive as as two agents um Right. But when we're talking about beliefs, whatever kind of belief that might be, um, that is an area that's uh not as well explored in neuroscience as say the visual system or or how we smell things

01:13:51 in the world, but it's a real thing, right? And so, and it's a big problem, you know, in the medical industry with a placebo effect where simply the idea can actually have an impact on your nervous system. And it's not just compliant behavior, but you actually see physiological changes due to the suggest um that this pill is going to help you, right? Um so the impact that beliefs have on human nervous systems is very real. Um and it's something that we don't understand completely, but it's something that should be researched more. No. No. So can can so just to try

01:14:23 to bring the two things together. Um do you agree that as as neuroscience improves its methods, its measurement techniques and so forth that there will always be a irreducible degree of unpredictability of human behavior or that it's purely a matter of measurement? If there is a redu if there's a irreducible level of unpredictability, we can call that tridom. You know the fact that even given all the addictions, even given all

01:14:53 the neurological conditions that people have, even given all the beliefs as you want to define them of choice in in in humans which uh is inherent to that human for one reason or another and I'm not going to go into quantum mechanics at this point, but there's an irreducible level of prediction that we we can agree to call that whatever everyone called accidents. But um I it seems to me that what we're entering

01:15:24 here with this is the intractable mind body problem in general. I mean this is a sort of special case having to do with beliefs and uh free will and so on. And the question is what does the neurology neuroscience have to do with with the brain? How does that connect up with the mind? And uh my own feeling at the moment is that uh it's got interesting things to say

01:15:56 but does not does not cross that chasm. I mean I don't know how that chasm can ever be crossed. I've read many books by both philosophers and neuroscientists and there's always a big gap that happens that uh whatever happens at at the level of neurons and what happens it it does not cross into the mind. Uh that's a separate issue. I don't know if it can

01:16:27 ever be crossed but seems to me the free will and and and the question of what happens you know in neurobiology is a special case. Yep. So what I sure the frustration I mean a lot of neuroscientists will say that the mind is just the brain right in whatever it does um that is that is stated um with a lot of faith right I mean it's not clear that that's actually been demonstrated what we know is that that when I do things to brain tissue that I can change

01:16:59 the expression of behavior right- which is our proxy for for mind um but it's one thing to say that what happens in the brain is is a determinant for for for what happens in the mind and we don't know we I would say we don't actually know a great way mental behavior other than the things that we could measure which would be either brain activity or behavior right and so um you know uh right right and I believe that to a large extent and

01:17:30 that's why I believe this the relevance of quantum mechanics and the fact that uh that there uh that that there's indeterminism in the material world outside of the brain outside of humans that in fact is something is going on in the brain which makes use of that freedom of particles. I mean we know very little about what happens most you know a lot of people who work neurobiology says

01:18:02 well quantum mechanics doesn't doesn't play a role in this well it doesn't probably at this level that is being but you know evolution is very opportunistic seems to me very likely that in the end what's happening in the brain at the level of molecules does not use all kinds of purely quantum tunneling uh and this kind of correlations that that happen in quantum mechanics they are purely quantum

01:18:33 mechanical that these are not being used at the level at the molecular level I believe that's what's going on and that's why haven't been investigated yet well simply because it's very hard to investigate what happens at that level in quantum mechanics even when it's set up in special experiment is very hard to deal with it although there are many interesting experiments ments going on at the level of single single particles but in the brain it's much much harder of course and I believe that in the end

01:19:05 it will be shown that there effects do take do play an important role in what's going on in the brain and I think in the end that the free will that we feel it will be connected up with this kind of spontaneity that happens with particles because I do believe that the arguments made by people like Hume and so on the uh don't hold much water. I think he's

01:19:37 talking by the way about free action. You know he talks about if action is not coerced from the outside and I do what I want then this is this is Hume then I'm now have free will. I think that just simply begs the question that it could be that my I don't have free will anyway because everything is determined but it just happens to be that he was talking about classical mechanics and if you talk about quantum mechanics the whole

01:20:08 question doesn't arise anyway. So, so I mean if I understand what you're saying, you're making a case for something like a random number generator. I don't know. That's another point. Um, you see the incompatibilists say agree with what I was saying here that compatibilism is is in fact doesn't agree with free will. So they bring in random choice or random things and the

01:20:38 compatibilists say, "Well, you're no better off than we are. If part of your choice is that you throw a coin and your choice is based on whether it's heads or tails, how have you gotten away? How how's that free will? So random choice doesn't help." Mhm. There's a subtle point here. What happens in quantum mechanics is not random choice. If I do a single act look at the decay of a single particle, it'll decay at a

01:21:10 certain time and that happens at a purely random time. That's true. But what happens in quantum mechanics is if you have several say two particles that become entangled or correlated in a quantum mechanical way, then what they do together is far from random. What happens here actually in the case what's called the Einstein Podulski Rosen experiment the EPR experiment what happens actually determines what happens in the other one and you get effects

01:21:40 that are very very different from random choice and it's these correlations which happen can happen over distances that I think play a major will end up playing a major role in understanding how the brain uh works and in particular how free will can occur in the brain. It's not random. That's a classical notion uh which is sort of you know it's supply something much

01:22:11 more radical in quantum mechanics that random choice but it's a kind of correlated choice that happens that's much more complicated. Can I just jump in on that? I just want to understand what you are saying because I have the impression that for me it's something like music what you are saying I mean and I don't fully understand it but I I have a sense that this matters and that is translatable into some kind of

01:22:44 theologians have been discussing in a completely different language and it would be very helpful if we could make these languages compatible in order to understand what we are each talking about and and what I hear you something about spontaneity something about leaps that are not random but still leaps I mean so something so in theology the the the kind of vocabulary for that is something new is happening you know that

01:23:15 is not random but it is something things are coming together and it is no longer the question whether I go to mazes and I choose a black dress or a blue dress. I mean this is not this kind of free will thing but it is something can I go beyond the or you know in which I am trapped I choose this or that but it doesn't difference and or it makes a difference but it is not not the difference that I would say is the

01:23:45 theological difference the difference between life and death survival or not survival I mean you know kind of uh going out of this bondage of choosing things that are destructive and finding a way to live that is no longer self-destructive for example self-destructive by kind of things coming together happening in a way I don't know where subatomic or whatever you how you call that or in in the brain the neurons or

01:24:17 whatever so the I mean this is what theologians have been discussing is there and they have talked about spirit in that so the spirit transforms the the ways we act and and the the transforms the whole experiment. It is a different it just move moves it in a different space on a different and there all of a sudden we see things happen before and it is not random. It is not it's still in this kind of oval

01:24:47 shape but it is something that maybe we didn't expect. Mhm. Well, let me bring up something you said in this connection and with your two cases, one of which is coerced and the other one isn't. You mentioning addiction. Suppose you look at a person who's really addicted to heroin or uh cigarettes. Um and uh he really can't he can't get around that. Yeah. Now, if you

01:25:19 say I I want a cigarette. I want to smoke a cigarette and I smoke it. Hume would say, "Okay, you're using your free will." But if I'm really a I may not want what I want, right? Yes. Because but I can't get around it. I'm coerced in that sense internally. And this is by the way this argument you know that determinism cannot be compatible with free will because if if if determines happen

01:25:51 inside then simply because I want it I'm being forced to want it just like an addict. So, uh, this idea of addiction sort of makes no one, I think, in this room would say that somebody who's addicted to heroin and and does bad things is at the same level as somebody who's not. Absolutely. And that's a a big distinction. We all feel there's a moral distinction there, right? And I think this idea then is you know it's we

01:26:25 all agree on this and how it you know how it plays out from the idea of general physical theories is a very difficult question as I said there is no there are no very good current experiments that bring in to the brain this idea of spontaneous action of particles by the way that's a very old idea I mentioned Epicurus actually brought in 2,300 years ago the very this very idea he said look

01:26:59 you know there was this idea of Democrus that everything is atoms and things uh just fall into the void if they're heavy or go up into the heavens he says first of all actions going on if you do this but also you won't get free will so he posited tiny little what it click uh climmans is it yeah the what was called now swerves and some of you may have read the greenlat's book called the

01:27:31 swerve it's about uh you know lucriccius book on on aicurus and he introduced a sort of spontaneous action of the interact but also so that free will can exist because he didn't believe what these chrysus and the stoics believe that that you can have free will if everything is determined. So this ide quantum ideas really goes back to the Greeks of 2300

01:28:02 years ago. So I guess I'm I'm curious where you get um where the step goes from spontaneous action of molecules because that there there is some evidence actually in the the brain that there is a lot of spontaneous activity. Yes. and you could take tissue preparation to insect the spontaneous activity. Um now whether that's tied to something we don't understand yet or if it is some kind of spontaneous action um that that's a whole another area of research and it's ongoing say I don't think I don't know people have talked about there are articles saying uh

01:28:34 quantum mechanical quantum mechanical effects already exist at at at the level of animals and they give examples with bird flight and various other things. I'm not convinced by that. Doesn't sound the the experiments are not I mean our retina is sensitive enough to detect a single photon. Single photons are detected by the retina and go to detect them. So so it's clear that single particles like photons have an effect on the brain. We we essentially see one or

01:29:06 two or three photons. And I mean the thing that that's stunned me is that that you could set things up so that a single photon could cause a person marathon. Mhm. Right. You set them up get the experimental control and you give them the instruction. Yes. When you see a photon get up and run a marathon. Yeah. And if they're a willing participant that'll trigger it and they'll go. And that's a whole lot of of activity that that is spontaneous by by single photon. Right. Um and it's kind of a bit but um there are certainly

01:29:36 other effects in the brain that are likely taking on these effects. So I'm curious I I guess where do you get from spontaneous action to kind of freedom in choice? Because when we talk about free choice the question is about who is in control right? Is it is it me the agent that's in control or is it is that control external to me? You mustn't think of this that a single uh particle in the brain this this spontaneity of a single particle I don't see that is translated into our free will. Exactly.

01:30:09 It's it's a whole it's some whole unknown network which is partly spontaneous partly regulated by by the network itself that somehow gets translated. I'm not saying I have any theory at all about it. I just have the hope and the and even the expectation that nature works, you know, evolution works in in such an opportunity. I can't believe that it doesn't make use of these quantum mechanical effects. I

01:30:40 would share your disbelief. I absolutely nature is likely taking advantage of these. Is there any reason to expect that the kinds of non-random forms of spontaneity that you feel is established? I would call it random. It's nand non it's non rand it's that's right it'sic thing but these correlations are not random. That's what I said. Oh sorry non-random. So, so it the question is is there any reason to believe that what you let's say rightly

01:31:14 claim that there's none of of spontaneity that counter the deterministic that those things Mhm. will coincide with the things that in understanding of free will we talk about such as intentions to pick up this thing and I mean it just seems to me there's there's absolute we have no framework by which to say this non-random spontaneity

01:31:45 that's established case by case translate into the intention that with which I drank this which constitutes my freedom the intention with which he picked up the microphone which con I mean we have no framework to say that these two things will coincide. No, it coincide. But you know there are experiments in which single molecules are supposed to let you uh recognize your grandmother. You know what's sometimes

01:32:17 called the grandmother cell single cells I should say not particles single cells may have such effects. So the fact that you see there are some correlations of this type between what happens in neurobiology and what happens at the level of mind that you're talking about whether free will will be one of them I don't know I have a that's only a hope and maybe you know an expectation but that's all it is and there are some sort

01:32:49 of more simple things in neurobiology correlate that's right Because if you take Libby's experiments, you know, these uh uh these RPS which are detected by the EEG and so on are speaking direct what's are measuring what's going on when somebody's flexing you know contracting a muscle to to raise their wrist and so on and so forth. But those are immediately I mean the observations of the evidence are immediately linked to things which have

01:33:20 to do with the intention that's involved when I flex my wrist etc. But you are talking at a level of abstraction and distance from this when you talk about you know the non-random sort of spontaneities that is there I we have no framework by which to bring these two things together problem so maybe pitch something here uh so so one thing that that humans are really good at are are uh telling stories but but also filling in details right so um

01:33:50 I can imagine that there might be um some kind of spontaneous action that that gives rise to behavior that's unpredictive even for the agent themselves or for others. Um but then it's filled in with well why did I do that? Well and then you kind of fill in these these confabulated stories from the agents perspective. But if you don't have a framework which connects them sounds like pure fantasy to me. You have to have a framework which says the spontaneities established at the quantum level etc are the sorts of things that

01:34:22 are relevant to the intention to to drink this or the pick up the mic and so on. Whereas bleb and we have a framework by which to link what is delivered by lieb's exper subjects and things like flexing the wrist and so on. the these things are just theoretically there's a chasm between them and to say well we we can expect the two things will will be brought together if you don't have a framework to think it sounds like a completely idle speculation but there are some not

01:34:55 free will more complex but at least there are things in the mind for instance recognizing a person which are connected to single cells happen having having certain things I was hoping that another speaker would be another discussant would be here Peter say I think uh there there was talk of inviting him he does exper I don't know a lot of what he does but I read an article in you know at the level of scientific American in which he does

01:35:28 experiments in which certain decisions are connected up again to a single molecule large molecule you know uh an organic molecule But activating the molecule has is connected up to certain decisions. I'm not this is far from anything like the I think we'll have we'll continue to have these and many more experiments that I think made extraordinary progress in the

01:35:59 understanding of the working of the brain and human behavior. The question I think the fundamental question is what is it going to say about free will ultimately and I think we're always correct me if I'm wrong but I think from a point of view of of of theory of quantum we're going to always going to hit a a an undecidability wall as it were regarding the the true nature of of of of human choice correct me if I'm wrong we're going to understand it a lot better exactly remember the spontaneity of of

01:36:31 you can't expl explain well it satisfies these quantum mechanical rules. Why is a particle choose to that in a a famous stern gelac experiment a silver atom sent through some kind of electromagnetic field and it decides to go this way or this way and that's the end of the story. the choice it makes between this and that simply is left as part of the theory and there's no explanation. If you try to

01:37:03 give an explanation of this, then you're back to classical physics and you run into this kind of contradiction. You just simply cannot explain you have you're stuck with this that the spontaneity is like as it is with Epicurus. It's there and you have to accept it. question is how do you connect that to free will? I can't tell you. I mean I don't know. Okay. I think we will go now to the audience for their

01:37:33 questions. Tell them to be brief this please. Questions in preference to comments. [Music] Um, with all respect, I I believe this discussion has confused the indeterminency of the the Heisenberg uncertainty principle which governs subatomic particles uh with the nature of our behavior. I

01:38:04 mean our behavior is determined by the firing of of neurons. Yes. So that it is completely deterministic. No, it doesn't at all. How I mean if if a photon hits our retina and and that may be a random event or non-deterministic event uh our subsequent behavior is still deterministic. I don't know how you come to that conclusion. the firing of neurons. So

01:38:35 what I mean how do we don't know how there there's a certain classical level at which they fire but there's all kinds of things going on at the atomic level which we know we know that atomic interactions satisfies the rules of quantum mechanics. How how this however translates I don't know. However, once the neurons fire, our behavior is complete is completely determined. Well, there and we have we don't have control

01:39:06 over that. So, so there there's there's room in between particular neuron within the brain firing um in in the actual expression of the behavior, right? So, so um you could have uh folks who have had physical injuries that that would actually block that communication reaching to the muscles, right? So, so just having uh neurons fire doesn't exactly mean that you're going to get the expression of some behavior. Absolutely. I mean, it's always going to be a probabilistic and and you might have um that window defined. So, that it's extremely high probability, but all

01:39:36 kinds of things could happen not just within the biological agent, but also the environment. And so if we're talking about about making the connection between neural activity and some kind of behavior or choice um you know and all all things being equal then things will happen but we don't know we don't know exactly how their the quantum effects within the molecules that make up the neurons. I mean that's just an open question. So, so I mean I you know I'll just end that for me firing is at the

01:40:06 end of the or once everything is fired you can say the decision is made yes but what about what happened until then I mean but that's beyond that's beyond our choice that's that's beyond our choice that's random or noneterministic it's not not a choice make no there's so so um some of the choices we make uh now will have a huge impact on on where we end up 5 years from now, right? Life choices um that includes the the kind of neural activity that might go on 5 years

01:40:37 from now. And so there is an idea in decision neuroscience and of of goal directed behavior and goal- directed decision-m where we might have some goal put off in time. And so we can start to do things between now and then so that it's not immediate effect but but uh start to build uh support and and structure so that we could achieve those goals. Right. But but how is that non-deterministic? I'm not saying it's not I think you're making a categorical mistake. uh firing of the neutron of the

01:41:09 the neurons uh in the brain some in collective manner that's what constitutes the decision itself and the firing the firing may itself have a spontaneous or free will you know we don't know what causes this firing that firing how they come together in some complicated way to say that because after the firons, you know, there's no decision

01:41:41 after they fire. Yes. But that we're talking about what happens until there's some collective firing of the neurons leads gives us the decision that we make. All of that as a as a matter of neurobiology may have a spontaneous element which is what we call making the decision. Okay. Thanks. It's going to sound like I'm picking up on the same u as previous question, but

01:42:11 it's it's different. I'd like to offer um obviously obviously overly simplistic but [Music] um causal or quasi causal model that attempts to integrate some of the different things that have been talked about. Uh so it starts at the quantum level with virtual particle pair creation. Um this is um being a quantum phenomenon, it's a nondeterministic event. Uh it's also the case that some of these virtual particles emerge and

01:42:42 typically fall back to the vacuum state for once they emerged. Sometimes they're energetic enough to remain uh in our level of physical reality if you would allow that. Um so if we couple this uh happening within neural tissue and one of those newly created non-deterministent uh virtual particles then interacts with the intracellular neuronal environment in such a way that

01:43:13 it contributes to the firing or not firing threshold of that neuron. uh then we have um a potential example of the relationship between quantum non-determinism and neur. So then we take it the next step and to the research that you mentioned about the effect of partially of magnetic fields. The neoortex generates a weak electromagnetic field which may in fact have also an effect on the way in which

01:43:45 the virtual particles enter or not uh an axon that may or or not be about approaching firing threshold. And it's also the case in terms of the molecule mentioned that we now know a a great deal more than we knew even last year about the the molecules that are recruited uh in the say memory formation process and the uh the DSBs the dual strand breakages and reconstitution that uh cause the formation of a all of these

01:44:16 events involve the recruitment of the effective molecules that could be brought about by the activation of the virtual particle made real. That's my idea and I would like um first of course your opinion. Look there are many quantum mechanical effects including the virtual particles we had created and go back and forth and some that say uh I mentioned another tunneling is another one. uh to me the the question of

01:44:47 quantum mechanical cor what are called entanglement or correlations play a probably but all this is speculation it's all speculation but it does you know it's worth speculating in this way because uh without that we we're back to the compatibility question which I think is now irrelevant given quantum mechanics okay thanks thank you very

01:45:17 You're talking about the utility of um belief in free will regardless of whether it might be an illusion or not. Um Pew Research in 2014 conducted a poll and they found that 54% of Americans deny that climate change is happening and that human beings are causing it. Now let's take me as an example. Let's say I believe in free will and you're a scientist and you're telling me I am of

01:45:48 my free will am causing climate change that may cause you know catastrophic um effects to the entire world to civilization then wouldn't that free will belief perhaps contribute to my denying that climate change is happening in order to preserve my self worth my self um identity. I you want to tackle this? Um, so let me have it. We've been

01:46:20 ignoring the information about climate change and making decisions that are destroying the planet, let's say. And your question is the is is this not an exercise a willful exercise of free will? No. The question is, if I believe in free will and scientists are telling me that my I'm doing this, wouldn't I be much more likely to go into denial in order to not feel guilty and indict

01:46:51 myself in other people? I see. Well, this maybe you know I mean on this subject I feel that the causal links between our behavior uh fossil fuel addicted behavior and uh the differences to the climate have not been established with the same spectacular

01:47:21 public visibility. As for instance, the causal links between nuclear power and the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki established. The reason why we all know about the nuclear possibilities of nuclear disaster is that the links the causal links between our behavior and some disaster were completely in fact

01:47:52 spectacularly established in the nuclear case. There's still a matter of arcane knowledges in the climate change case. And and that's the real problem. We you know we just have not got the causal links established for the public mind everywhere and maybe are doing this out of guilt and and maybe there are people who are doing it willfully but uh uh corporations are paying people to to

01:48:22 hide the facts and so on. But by and large I think the real thing is to get the information out in a way that it was out in the nuclear thing. Nobody denies that the knowledge is uh in the nuclear case. It's just different in the climate case and it it took a Hiroshima Nagasaki to establish that causal link. Yeah. But but I think there is a difference because the I mean changing our behavior with regard to fossil fossil um usage

01:48:55 and and climate change and ecology is requires us to kind of change. I mean the things we like it is the addiction issue. I mean I like my cigarette and I'm if I'm a drug user I need that and I don't want to change. So you know if they tell me this is going to happen I mean we see it is happening now but you know if it's still the bulk will happen in 10 years in 20 years so why not cave

01:49:26 in and just enjoy that's absolutely true I agree with you and I think you what your mention of St. Paul actually goes back to this. This is, if you put it that way, this is no different from the fact that most of us know that if we fill our gut at every meal, we're going to die before we would if we didn't do so. And yet, most of us do fill our gut. So, it's the the climate change case is not different once you describe it that way. And in that sense, it's an

01:49:58 irrationality of the kind that Paul and others mentioned, right? We know the better, we do the worse. Well, I think it's also in some sense a perversion of what used to be rational, right? So, it used to be the case that we should build every meal because our meals didn't come three times a day, right? Um, and likewise, the addictions to cigarettes, I mean, these are experiments that that I have participated with and looked at in the groups that I've worked with. Nicotine gets into your brain and it and it changes the chemistry fundamentally.

01:50:28 and and we have uh experiments uh that Terrell Lance and Reed Monigu, two of my colleagues ran that show that that fundamental uh computations that that are very important to how we learn new information that representation in our brain is changed by these drugs of addiction. And there's new uh work coming along where we're looking at um how beliefs uh could could either insulate us from taking on new information or not. Right. And I think as far as with the climate change issue, um people about what's important to them

01:51:00 and their family um and and that either insulates them from new information or or or it allows them to bring it in. And I mean it's you know if it's 50/50 split um it just gives you an idea of of how the variety of beliefs that we have will have an impact on on what comes next. um its connection to free will. I I think that that that's it's um not so clear to me, but Okay. Thank you.

01:51:30 Just want to say thanks for having this discussion. This is the most important topic in the history of time. So, whoever's in charge here should have more free will discussions because there's no more important topic. I just want uh my name is Nick. I'm the actually the producer of a TV show here Wednesday night, channel 56, Time Warner. It's called Free Willark. We debate free will every Wednesday at 11 on Kable Access Manhattan. George is my co-host over there and he has a show on White Plains. Anyway, back to my question. Can any of you geniuses who All right. Can any of you guys give me one example in your entire life that

01:52:01 that was a free will decision or anybody in the audience just give me one example of a free will decision? Coming here today. Was there a cause for that decision? What's what was there a cause or a reason for that decision? Well, there's I'm an economist. I So, so I think there's the costs, their benefits. I balanced them and I made a decision. What's So, there a reason to your decision. You just admitted it, right? Yeah. To that

01:52:33 cause and a cause to that cause and you can regress your cause and cause causal chain back to the moment before you were born. We didn't self-cselves. Our parents had sex. Therefore, that's an easy reputation of free will. I don't know what's so difficult for you to admit. Part of the cause was was my own decision of my mind. Now a self cause. You're a little god. You're a first cause. You can cause things without any prior causation. Is that what you're telling me? No. Let me jump in. Actually, wait. He said his decision to come here was a freely willed decision and it had a cause. You

01:53:04 just said that, right? Yeah. And that cause has a cause. And that cause has a cause. Regressing back to the moment before you were conceived, before the planets were, you know, evolved before to the big bang. the causes. Just because there are causes doesn't mean there I'll tell you what the cause is because I know what the cause of everything. Just because there's a cause, it doesn't mean it's a determining cause. You know, linenets had a certain principle of sufficient reason and which he says everything that

01:53:35 happens has a cause that deter actually determines it. Quantum mechanics tells you that the that law is false. It's simply false. Okay. So, determinism or indeterminism does not prove free will. I mean, if you make an indeterminism, wait a minute. Wait a minute. Uh, so I'm just saying, you know, there there are restrictions on my freedom. Certainly, I can't go through that wall even if I want to because it won't stop it'll stop me from going through it. On the other

01:54:06 hand, I can walk around in the room. I mean just because it's not a question of randomness or complete free will or what have you versus complete determinally determined things by causes there there's a comp a whole complex of causes that says I'm going to marry this woman determining some of them not I want to make this more simple okay I I don't know any of you guys I know cause is always the pleasure principle

01:54:38 otherwise known is hydonic imperative. You're always predicting what will give you the most amount of pleasure and the least amount of pain. So that's the cause for every decision. You have no choice but to do that. No free will. I don't know why we have to have that's that's your theory. But I think we can I think I think we can I I'll be happy to after the the meeting, but I think so you're going to tell me how I can go towards I promise you after the meeting after the meeting you and I will discuss it next. My my thing is every cause is going toward your every human being has

01:55:09 no choice but to attempt to go. No, I heard that. I heard that. But say is the belief in free will is very harmful. It's very toxic. It makes people hate other people. It causes suicide. People want to punish themselves cuz they think they could have done otherwise, which is obviously BS. And it makes people feel like failures when they fail at something. And I think whoever believes in free will needs to take a hard look in the mirror and just know that you believe in free will because you have no choice but to do what makes you feel best about yourself or going towards pleasure. Thank you. Next next question.

01:55:41 The guy who believes in free will. Hello. Hello free will either he's concerned to do it right. Everything based on your personal history is a condition response. All right. Next question. Next question. Okay. So that was a perfect segue for me. My name is Shulamit. Okay. And I do this work as a profession. I've done thousands of sessions. And what um some people here may know about energy psychology is what

01:56:11 we're learning as all negative emotion comes from a disturbed energy field. And on tapping on certain points while we hold consciousness in mind to tuning it to an issue actually brings it up to the surface. And what I have found is that there has been no evidence of free will from my work with my clients because once I clear whether we talk about the information or morphagenetic fields that you may know about as a scientist from Bruce Lipton's

01:56:41 information on cellular biology wherever you go with that once we find that information and we remove that information that person starts unfolding in different behavior. So, it's still on some level determinism, but what I'd like to do is talk about the spiritual aspect. And I'm probably going to be a pain in the buck because every time I'm going to come here, I'm going to talk about spirituality, but I feel like people aren't talking about it enough. And as far as first cause is concerned as being pleasure, that's a possibility. That's

01:57:11 certainly a belief. But I'm going to go beyond that. And I really want to hear what you have to say, and I'll sit. But I had an enlightenment experience that deeply changed my life where I got to experience myself as that or as God or divine or whatever. And what I want to say is and hear what you have to say is if there is nothing but God, creator, divine, and God contains all that there

01:57:42 is to be known and nature is God expressing as law and law runs everything which is sensient and non-sensient. Isn't that determinism? Isn't it possible that free will is essential in us so that we as God expressing itself will be able to abandon oneself to egoic experience? Thank you. you want to well is the the interesting thing is um if God is the all

01:58:13 determining cause you could just quote one of these interesting Bible verses where it says yes but God created human beings in God's image so we have part of we are part of this divine capacity to choose also and you know of course in theology God is the supreme free will and that is No other free will like that. But then you have and you see there are this is what I this is why I'm

01:58:43 not a systematic theologian but a biblical scholar. So my area is the Bible because the this there is something else in storytelling than in constructing dogmatic big buildings. Stories tell things from the one side and from the other side. So you have a story where you hear that human beings are there to rule the earth and even subdue it which is a little bit horrible in in light of contemporary concerns but they are there

01:59:14 they have free will. The next story you read that is Genesis 1, Genesis 2, human beings are there earth and to preserve the earth. No freedom at all. They have just to kind of to accept their role as stewards of creation and they have to ad what is necessary. So how do you reconcile the two and yeah by telling stories and stories like that that changed you or you know and and I am

01:59:46 kind of I'm finding these stories very interesting what we tell each other about the moments where we we were not following the pleasure principle but we some did I follow the pleasure principle in coming here? No, I was scared to death because I never really thought about free will. You know, you this is not my area. You know, I feel uncomfortable. But I thought it is important. Um and you see the moment when we went out go out of our way and

02:00:18 do something that we think is necessary. This is why I'm interested in Simon's and in your I mean these kind of switches that happen when we change the course of our own habits and habiters and and kind of go into a different mode and maybe look more at the other than at ourselves and all that. I think and these things happen. I know they happen. So, but you know this is what I think is free will becomes a power that can

02:00:50 change things and that's what I'm interested in here. Thank you. You know uh Isaac Bash singer said we must believe in free will. We have no choice. I just want to preface uh my comments and questions u u with a statement that I appreciate everything everyone on the panel said today. So this is a respectful if I have criticism it's

02:01:21 respectful. It's not meant to be negative. Uh a little bit about myself undergraduate. Just keep in mind we have four other people so we don't have that much time. You don't have to worry about me being so I'm very to the point. So, I appreciated that gentleman's uh passion. And to the point, my undergraduate molecular biologist from MIT, a JDMBA, a year spent at Penn Medical School. I loved hearing all the comments. Reminded me of grad school. Unfortunately, it also reminded me of the fact that you guys are so brilliant that you're talking up here. And for the rest of us,

02:01:54 unfortunately, it's very difficult because you're not defining what your operating terms are. What is predeterminism versus free will? Dr. a coach and obviously a brilliant mathematician. I appreciate that. I spent time on the trading floor as as a market maker and I understand probabilistic theory. But are we saying that free will it has to be uh a conscious decision in our own rational best interest given what our probabilities are? We never really nail that down. So I to to the point shortly

02:02:27 I have two very concrete questions. One is and my utmost respect to philosophy. I think this is a philosophical exercise. Philosophy informs everything we do. Science, art. Is this a philosophical exercise? What is the purpose? Because from my point of view, people are rational beings. They don't but they don't always behave rationally. So you cannot always predict their behavior. Dr. Kbal, I'm sure you would agree. Economists have this

02:02:58 problem. Keynesian economists have had problems with the economy all over the world. We're looking at a currency crash. And I'm not getting political, but the Austrians, their main criticism is you can't quantify all human behavior. People are rational beings, but they also act with passion and irrationally. I was saying to my colleague that uh maybe someone who would be very good on this panel would be someone from the intelligence operations community. They have to use game theory to predict human behavior both in populations and excuse me let me

02:03:30 just excuse me let me just let me finish let me tell you you have two concrete questions I would like you to ask those two concrete questions I don't want you to expand on them because we have other people and then we have limited and I don't know your name I don't know your background sir so I have a question so intelligence community has failed to predict several instances economist promises have failed. Do you acknowledge that this is a a useful exercise interesting? But there is no concrete

02:04:02 endpoint in this because unfortunately you cannot you cannot always predict human behavior and you I I'll put it in more concrete terms in experimental design in experimental design it is important to define your your independent as well as your dependent variables. This is multiffactorial. If we want to talk about photons all day long, we could. Certainly, there's an effect. The sum of those effects, does it affect us? Yes. What is the point of the exercise? And what are your operating definitions? That's it's it's a why. It's And I don't

02:04:35 mean to be disrespectful. I really just want to understand. Thank you. The why is important, but I'm as far as I'm concerned, I try to answer. I I talk about prediction and of course it's very closely related to the issue of free will. you know, if if if there's free will, then there's no prediction. Whenever there's human behavior, I actually think the distinction or the distance between human-based endeavors like economics and non-behavioral endeavors like say physics or thermodynamics or what have

02:05:06 you is smaller than the distance between uh uh simple models and complex models. uh simple models in economics, for example, studying uh treasury bill auctions. When people do models of that, they're actually pretty good and fairly accurate in predicting price levels and trade volumes. We have models trying to predict the economy, which is an incredibly complex system, we do very poorly. thing is true in fact if you think about it nowadays with you know with physical sciences uh it's very easy to have

02:05:37 laboratory models of Newtonian classic mechanics that are extremely good at predicting whatever you want to predict but we still cannot successfully predict the weather more than five or six days why because it's an incredibly complex model so I don't think it's so much an issue about I don't think free will in here is playing a very important role it's more a matter of model complexity that's the economist's answer to that thank Thank you. Thank you. As a biologist, it reminds me of nature versus nurture. It's interesting, but another thought. Okay.

02:06:10 Thank you so much for your round table. This is wonderful. Um, what is your definition each of you of will, not free will, but will. And how does it exclude animals? Good or exclude animals? Um it's been a very it's it was brought up briefly but just how does it exclude animals or does it Mhm. So so I I'll just start with my shared

02:06:41 confusion I think on what we mean by free will and we've talked about it being ambiguous or or what is it exactly right? So um for me when I when I think about this question um I actually set it aside because the notion of free will or or will it could be choice it could be the intent to choose. It could be a whole range of things that that we all as individuals kind of share some stake in in what the definition ends up being. But what it is we're talking about when we talk about free will is how do people

02:07:13 make choices? Where do those choices come from? What motivates them? Um, and so for me as as a neurobiologist, I study that behavior. I study the organism which we call humans and I I give them choices and I study their brain activity and so so uh the idea of will or free will um is a provocative concept and it has use to to discuss these kinds of things. But but what I'm interested when I when I think about that is is our capacity for choice um

02:07:45 and what controls that. Yeah, I I do think that's a very important and and I think I'm I'm not going to say anything about the will because I think the issue can be raised by just talking about freedom and not talking about some particular faculty called the will. So um and this sort of sums up uh my I guess my angle on many of the the interesting things that have come up in in what have surfaced in what my

02:08:17 colleagues have said. Um you see I completely agree that um in the end this is a special uh topic within the larger problem of the mind body problem and I agree with people like Libay though not partic with the with the conclusions Libbe comes to on on uh on that particular evidence that he

02:08:49 provides. But I generally agree with the view that there is a real sense in which if you talk about the dispositions of an animal's mind which uh yield the animals behavior and you talk about the dispositions of bodies whether animals or human beings there is bound to be a reduction in some sense of the dispositions the mental dispos positions

02:09:20 to the physical dispositions. So if there is freedom and if the mind is in some way not in these ways dependent on or reducible to the dispositions of the body. It can only be I think because the mind contains an element that is normative. If you think of the mind, human beings or animals or if you think of human

02:09:51 beings as being just like animals, then the mind has tendencies. Just because they are mental tendencies rather than bodily or physical tendencies doesn't mean that they're outside of nature. So if nature is deterministic and not as you suggest it is if nature is deterministic then the the mind because it is if it contains nothing but natural tendencies is determined and there is as

02:10:22 you've been saying but if the mind contains a normative element that is when people so suppose an is its behavior it it does something it frustrated it changes to something else. You might think, well, that's animal rationality. Well, maybe it is animal rationality, but the animal doesn't change the behavior by thinking what I did was wrong. There's no normative element, right? It just gets frustrated and it

02:10:54 moves to something else. That's not normative in the full-fledged sense of thinking this was wrong. I ought to do this. It's normativity of that kind which I think is not possessed by animals. It's possessed only by us. And that's what I think if anything shows that the mind is not just tendencies in nature but is set apart. You know your question of will really

02:11:25 touches on the psychic question of motivation. But uh Rob and I both of us stayed out of discuss this discussion because we didn't want to bring that in. Um I'm trying not to get tongue tied here. Um so uh most of the dialogue uh was focused um kind of from this anthropomorphic um viewpoint on uh specifically around the um the problems concern of the individual. Um I think that's maybe because uh like the first step is to

02:11:57 conquer this idea of losing our self or our dualist intuitions that we have um this kind of privileged seat in the uh cartisian theater and and that science can't uh probe this objective. Um but and I think it's my maybe it's a language thing that if we develop the language but my my question what I what I was interested in more so was supposing that we can overcome that for the moment and suspend our disbelief

02:12:27 um move away from this anthropomorphic perspective on free will and uh think about it um on kind of superhuman and purely materialistic uh level. Um the question is is matter moving towards and possibly if it's not capable of achieving free will and would that be a kind of way to move

02:12:59 towards a uh a kind of designed determinism in a way if that makes any sense. who can tackle this? Well, so so um one of the things that I tried to put forth in and the way that I see the progress of science on on these kinds of problems is that as we learn how the system operates, right, our our brain, our bodies in societ um it gives us new options, right? So so

02:13:30 so there's lots of ways in which we might not be able to make a choice that we might be constrained. One of them is that we don't know what the options are. If you don't know the option, you don't ever have the option to to make that choice. So, as we learn about uh what guides our choice behavior, uh what constrains that um we can have longerterm goals where we can intervene on that and actually the space of possibilities, right? Um we do that by inventing new medicines um or or uh new technologies that gives us have 10 years

02:14:03 ago. In some sense we are increasing for our species the options going forth. Um some of them might may not might not. So thank you. Thank you. Hi. Um well there's been a very constructive flow of ideas be any different. Uh I'm an undergraduate student and uh I'm really interested in artificial intelligence and its impact on future upcoming technologies.

02:14:35 and especially more so how is quantum theory going to I won't say determine but anticipate these future technologies and the impact on our society and do you think that if given unlimited resources and unlimited I guess uh the ultimate proficiency in algorithms could we create a machine that's capable of replicating itself self enough to

02:15:06 maybe free willing actually. Um so there was just within uh the last month or two there's a paper study published uh by a team at Google um where they've developed an algorithm that could uh basically execute human level control in the context of a video game space. So they um it's a really interesting development kind of a cute experiment. So they have their algorithm play Atari 2600 games um and they

02:15:38 basically give the algorithm very little information about as much information as you might have coming into a game and the algorithm can learn how to play it to the level of a um professional game tester if not better on some of the games. Um and so the report is called you know human level control uh through this uh deep reinforcement learning algorithm. And this is a the core of the algorithm is is is something that we look at um how uh mamleian brains and actually other other systems um do learn. Um and so here it's not going to

02:16:11 necessarily quantum level depictions but this is just a computation that this algorithm is able to execute um where it's able to learn from its environment and feedback um to to the level of of you know how you or I might play a a video game. Um so so I mean if you're interested in that you should look at that. But how is that free will? Uh it's so so I mean point of view and what I've said that the idea of free will isn't necessarily a useful one for the what we're actually

02:16:41 interested in studying here. Right? What we're interested in is is how do humans behave? What's the sources of that? Whether it's free um that that that's not necessarily useful. All of our choices are constrained. or biological a so there are constraints there's limits to that um now that we can get a a computer algorithm to to display a level of control that a human can within that environment um I I think is an interesting kind of demonstration of of where technologies it does provide by the way I think an interesting test I

02:17:13 don't know if you could run that test if you had a very large number of such highly evolved uh artificial uh artificially intelligent intelligent beings. Uh it would be interesting thing to see whether there was any uh distinctive feature in their behavior v vis humans in a variety of situations. Um I think that would be an interesting test for at least some notion of free will. If the answer is no, then I would say that there is no free will as we're defining it in here as at least as I was thinking of defining it, I think. Okay. Thank you

02:17:46 very much. [Music] [Applause] [Laughter] Who is angry young men? Who is angry young? I know they come from a meetup group. You come from what group?

02:18:17 How that