On Agency and Evolution an interview with Kevin Mitchell
Added 2024-02-20 05:25:12 +0000 UTCIn this episode, Matt and Chris converse with Kevin Mitchell, an Associate Professor of Genetics and Neuroscience at Trinity College Dublin, and author of 'Free Agents: How Evolution Gave Us Free Will'.
We regret to inform you that the discussion does indeed involve discussion of philosophy-adjacent topics such as free will, determinism, consciousness, the nature of self, and agency. But do not let that put you off! Kevin is a scientist and approaches them all through a sensible evolutionary and scientific perspective. If you ever wanted to see Matt geek out and Chris remain chill... this is the episode for you.
Links
- Kevin's website
- Robert Sapolsky vs Kevin Mitchell: The Biology of Free Will | Philosophical Trials #15
- Kevin's TedX Talk: Who’s in charge? You or your brain? | Kevin Mitchell | TEDxTrinityCollegeDublin
Comments
I see! 👍 Thanks for the response!
Gustaf Pihl
2024-02-26 07:00:37 +0000 UTCWell, in fact i don't mind some modest (semi/pseudo)merging with the universe now and then, during life. But i thought it was a very fine and funny definition of being something alive, given all that was said and explained around it. While it also made me think:"no, that doesn't sound like a guru".
Arbo
2024-02-25 02:32:46 +0000 UTCNo Gustaf I don’t disagree. I was being hyperbolic in part to be a contrarian and in part because I’m always trying to get a laugh. Sam Harris introduced me to the free will debate over a decade ago, and I’ve been fascinated by the self since my first college course in Buddhism over twenty years ago. I can’t get enough of these debates, and though I’ve considered myself a determinist for a long time, Mitchell really made me question how certain I am about that. He introduced in my brain, just the possibility, that there is room for something different to happen if we could turn back the clock. The problem is we can’t, and there’s no reason for me to think we can ever test either theory, so the debate starts reminding me of something that looks incredibly compelling but seen at the right angle is actually quite boring. The self is a whole different beast, but not necessarily any more interesting of a debate. It seems to me the only place for that debate to go is to train a bunch of the smartest most reasonable proponents of the self in vipassanā meditation and send them out on 3 month retreat and see if it changes their conception of the self. Of course if it does, their definition of the self has probably changed.
Christopher McLaughlin
2024-02-24 18:14:39 +0000 UTCFrom my understanding, he is a compatibilist, which means he thinks we have free will.
Linda Sears
2024-02-24 17:17:19 +0000 UTCI’m pretty sure that at some point I will want what he is implying. This is assuming that I make it long enough that my body can’t function anymore, and I’m in great pain. At that point, shuffling off this mortal coil will be a relief, but I will do my best to not merge with the universe until then!
Linda Sears
2024-02-24 14:06:26 +0000 UTCHi Roland Do you think Sean agrees with determinism? I know he is a fan of Many Worlds but I don't know if that is deterministic.
Kirsten Greed
2024-02-24 04:03:23 +0000 UTC"You don't want to be one with the universe." 👍😃
Arbo
2024-02-23 16:37:42 +0000 UTCThe most annoying thing with these types of debates though has to be the illusion that just because we’re using the same words doesn’t mean they mean the same thing in our internal dictionaries. Listening to a debate from the outside, this can often be painfully obvious. 😶
Gustaf Pihl
2024-02-23 06:22:23 +0000 UTCI feel that what you described, that there is nothing there, just different definitions, more applies to debates about what art is for example. As in that case we’re debating the meaning of a concept that we entirely invented. Whereas with most definitions of free will, it seems reasonable to assume it may be a concept separable from humanity. For example: “Could a given living agent have acted differently given the same circumstances?”. Although it may not be practically testable, I still think it makes sense as a question. But perhaps you disagree?
Gustaf Pihl
2024-02-23 06:19:27 +0000 UTCI don’t quite agree that there is nothing interesting there to wonder about, assuming you have unambiguously defined the question. However I do definitely agree that most debates on the topic amount to two or more people, each with their own definitions and emotional attachments, completely talking past one another. Very frustrating 🙂.
Gustaf Pihl
2024-02-23 06:12:20 +0000 UTCI’d like to hear too Zach. It is such a complicated subject to think about— it really befuddles my brain….
Lucy
2024-02-22 23:19:21 +0000 UTCI'm interested if it isn't too much trouble.
Linda Sears
2024-02-22 22:41:46 +0000 UTCI'm halfway through but I just want to say that this is a fabulous interview! I love your questions and how Mitchell threads the needle between the extreme views. By contrast, Sapolsky has been very stubborn (Harris-ian?) and pedantic on this topic, which is a shame!
Jesse Rimler
2024-02-22 21:12:02 +0000 UTChttp://www.wiringthebrain.com/2023/12/undetermined-response-to-robert.html?m=1 This is what Mitchell is claiming, it goes so wrong so fast in my mind but I don’t have a lot of time rn to go over it. A lot of it seems to imply a sort of dualism on Mitchell’s part as well btw, and maybe some equivocation on the type of dualism he is talking about at different points. But, we should not all cower in fear the moment we hear dualism, I think most people walk around as dualists without recognizing it. It’s genuinely hard to get rid of property dualism without something like panpsychism or something (in my opinion) even more absurd like eliminativism. Just for an example, Mitchell states: “Sapolsky rightly criticises the position of dualism – the idea, inherited from Descartes, that there are two separate kinds of stuff, physical and mental. Under this view, the mental realm is where we make decisions, thus freeing us from the confines of physical determinism. “ This is a fair summary of Cartesian dualism, but note that we could modify the claim to say “Under this view, the mental realm is where we EXPERIENCE decisions”. I also think this implies a type of dualism, but it’s not an example of Cartesian dualism to assert the existence of a different type of property that lacks causal efficacy in itself. Sorry if this is incoherent, If I get free time this weekend and my stats course doesn’t destroy me, I may type out a full response if anyone is interested.
Zack Katopodis
2024-02-22 18:23:42 +0000 UTCThanks for the info about Galen Strawson, Zack. His views match my own.
Linda Sears
2024-02-22 13:32:52 +0000 UTCInteresting! Thanks for the info.
Linda Sears
2024-02-22 13:15:55 +0000 UTCI was surprised by Kevin's expressed thoughts regarding AI. If memory serves he gave a brief explanation of what overfitting is and how the current AI models lack it. Overfitting, along with a compression of the training data achieved by extracting general concepts from it. He quite confidently said he thinks that these concepts are what we mostly mean when we say something has understanding, and that we are far from achieving anything like this in AI. Now I know that he gave the caveat of not being an expert on this before opining on it, but.. The whole field of machine learning exists and works because we are able to create models that avoid overfitting and do actually compress the training data. Most of the little theory there is in the area is specifically about techniques for measuring and reducing overfitting, like test/train/val splitting, regularization, having a good data to parameter count ratio, VC dimension and so on. When it comes to the compression aspect, take something like Stable Diffusion. The models are on the order of 4GB, whereas the training dataset is on the order of tens of TB. The compression ratio is on the order of 1000x - 10000x. Although the compression is lossy, the amount of concepts these models seem to gain some level of visual understanding of is the whole reason these are so impressive. If neural networks were not able to prevent overfitting or generalize concepts, we might as well just be doing simple interpolation over the training data, right? Now as to what we make of this, how we define understanding, of course that is a rather arbitrary and subjective thing. I just wanted to add my 2 cents on the more technical aspects as I feel it could be quite consequential in getting a good prediction of how far along we are and what these models are doing inside. It can be quite frustrating following the AI debate with everyone expressing very strong opinions about what is going on in the models even when they don't have much experience or knowledge in the area.
Gustaf Pihl
2024-02-22 07:00:20 +0000 UTC“Gradient of Anus, the Decoding the Gurus Story” 😂
Christy Kilgore
2024-02-22 00:57:18 +0000 UTCHi Linda, I think Robert Sapolsky, while saying “he” or “she” or “I” don’t have free will is thinking intuitively that inside the determined human there is a tiny little thing, the “he” or the ‘she” or the “I”, that is inextricably bound in with the determined human but is feeling emotions and we should pity that little essence-pronoun-person if his life goes wrong and he gets in trouble, like ending up in jail, or addicted to drugs, or having no friends because he’s so bad tempered nobody likes him. Because the little essence can feel emotions we should pity him, not hate him or punish him too much for things he can’t help, try to forgive him and love him. I think it’s a useful way to think because it makes it easier to forgive people and to love them no matter how annoying they are. So that makes Robert a closet dualist I think—considering the little essence somewhat of a different sort of thing because of it’s ability to feel emotions, especially it’s ability to be sad and suffer.
Lucy
2024-02-21 23:38:26 +0000 UTCCould you explain how Sapolsky is a closet dualist?
Linda Sears
2024-02-21 21:08:36 +0000 UTCSean Carroll sometimes gives the example of a bowling ball, and a person doing a quantum experiment, like measuring the spin of something. If the outcome is spin up, move the bowling ball one meter to the left, if it's spin down, move it to the right. Minimal difference on the quantum level, but very apparent on the macroscopic level.
Roland Weber
2024-02-21 21:03:26 +0000 UTCI thought Mitchell sounded like he's actually interested and invested in exploring the topic far deeper than the <i>"I like the one view I've heard about, don't understand what anything else means, and can thus resolve any related question by stating what I think in a loud enough voice, like an American abroad"</i> position you often spot in scientists and Sam Harris. There are philosophical problems with (say) his presupposing rather than arguing for a metaphysics, but if you accept smaller things are more true than bigger things as a matter of scientific fact, I feel you get a good bit more mileage from this over regular old New Atheist tier unreflective reductionism.
Exai
2024-02-21 16:10:15 +0000 UTCMy thinking is that there is indeterminacy at the quantum level, yet the classical laws of physics still hold in most cases on this earth.
Linda Sears
2024-02-21 15:25:05 +0000 UTCI enjoyed the second part better. I agree with Mitchell about what understanding is. I also agree with him that creativity requires a living agent, but this may change, depending on what one means by the term creativity. It seems to me that what we term “free will” becomes more salient at higher levels of consciousness. I could imagine that the amount of complexity that a living system has gives it more options, and the ability to think through those options could provide a better outcome. My tendency is to think that some people have more “free will” or agency than others. A person with an intellectual disability that severely limits them from, for example, going to college and becoming an biologist has fewer options and opportunities, and a person with Alzheimer’s does not have the memory/mental capacity to make meaningful cognitive maps of their realty that help them negotiate the world successfully. People who are living under repressive regimes also have limited agency. A just world for me is one where more humans have more opportunities and the necessary resources they need to help them so that their agency is expanded. This is one reason why I think education is so important. I think a lot of this debate comes down to what one means by free will.
Linda Sears
2024-02-21 15:22:16 +0000 UTCReally good episode. And he completely does sound Norn Irish….even after he explained. I wonder if he and Sam Harris meet in person will they mysteriously physically cancel each other out given this seemed to be the opposite of that interview. Do still think there’s the free will / moral responsibility/ guilt question that perhaps but separate and Sapolsky alludes to about decision making. Even if we quibble about terms the ‘system’ /self doing the ‘thing’ , by the time we accept legal responsibility age (12/16/18/21) has already been long set in motion by factors completely outwith its control- genetics/ in utero/environment etc. so that idea of ‘ the system /self’ at that specific time really having significant choice seems silly other than serving a societal/ deterrent function and probably throwback to good/evil simplicity of Religion… But as Dennet says- The ‘Truth’??, people can’t handle the Truth!!!’ ( or might have been Jack Nicholson)
Brainbiter
2024-02-21 14:26:13 +0000 UTCAh, ok that makes more sense. One last thing I have to say then: Vervaeke's conclusions on it may all be wrong, but information processing is a central topic in Awakening. His definition of wisdom and theory of meaning in life rest on his arguments for how agents solve various information processing problems.
Trees
2024-02-21 14:18:38 +0000 UTCThis was great! I read Kevin’s book, and I really was excited you were going to interview him. His first book, “Innate” is free on Audible! At first I couldn’t understand his point and thought Sapolsky was altogether right, but after reading his books and listening to lots of his podcast interviews I began to understand what he was getting at when he said Sapolsky was a closet duelist, and then I realized I was too!
Lucy
2024-02-21 14:07:03 +0000 UTCSorry there was an extra not in there!
Christopher Kavanagh
2024-02-21 13:47:33 +0000 UTC"When Kevin is talking about meaning, he is not mostly talking about 'meaning' as a term that relates to information processing in biological things." Kevin's not talking about information processing? I must have misinterpreted him then. He definitely mentions something about a bacterium being sensitive to information because the information has meaning. I generally agree with your opinion of Vervaeke's conversations with Pageau and Jordan, although I think the only one of those conversations I've listened to in whole was the one you guys covered. I find his lectures to be totally different though.
Trees
2024-02-21 13:45:49 +0000 UTCI concede that it's technically a non-sequiteur, it's just that a lot of anti-freewillers fall back on determinism as rationale. Other arguments seem to rely on rather specialist philosophical definitions of free will that are a) counter-intuitive and non-obvious relative to common use of the term; and b) somewhat circular, in being specified in such a way as to be inconsistent with scientific naturalism or some other worldview. For the record, I think I'm on the same page as Kevin by associating the idea of free will with agency
Paul Bowman
2024-02-21 10:25:12 +0000 UTCOh and as for Vervaeke, no he's not as mental as Bret. He is much more reasonable.
Christopher Kavanagh
2024-02-21 04:58:02 +0000 UTCMatt seriously blew my mind this episode! I’ve been listening to philosophers and neuroscientists and physicists debate free will, and to a lesser degree the self, for years and years. When Matt suggested that maybe those are shit questions my intuition fought it at first. But I couldn’t stop thinking that maybe Matt is right and the more and more I thought about it the clearer it became that he was definitely right! It’s shit because the correct answer to this debate lies completely in how we define “free will” or “the self”. The philosopher we should be looking to is not Dan Dennett, it’s Karl Popper. It seems to me neither free will nor determinism is falsifiable, meaning they’re both non-scientific. As far as the self, even in Buddhism the self is considered a “conventional" or "provisional" truth, while non-self is an “ultimate" truth. As far as I can tell the existence of the self comes down solely to how you define it. They’re both shit questions. Matt you’re a fucking genius mate!
Christopher McLaughlin
2024-02-21 04:57:26 +0000 UTCI genuinely do think it is similar though (the analogy between Bret and Vervaeke). When Kevin is talking about meaning, he is mostly talking about 'meaning' as a term that relates to information processing in biological things. Most of his discussion of the topic in the book is not focused on humans. He is very clear about the definitions he is using and the biological and evolutionary grounding- there is no overlap with mysticism. He is not doing what I have seen John and Jordan do. Vervaeke (and Jordan) find huge amounts of overlap in their content/insights with folks like Jonathan Pageau, they find it extremely stimulating to explore how his insights relate to their concepts of meaning because they are mostly talking about them in fuzzy psychological ways. But what Pageau talks about is as relevant to Kevin's conceptualization of meaning as Bret's lineage theories are to Kevin's understanding of evolution. I think the issue is just the contingency of language, Kevin is using the same terms but he means very different things. I've spoken directly with Kevin and John and read both of their work. It is not the same in terms of the degree of science involved. As for discount code, sadly no! Should have asked ;)
Christopher Kavanagh
2024-02-21 04:50:35 +0000 UTCI would imagine there is more scientific evidence behind Kevin's arguments than Vervaeke's. But no, it's not akin to saying that he agrees with Brett because he talks about evo psych. That's a bit of a straw man. The overlaps on subjects are far more specific and numerous. Get above proteins and all biologists see things through an evolutionary lens. There aren't a lot of people talking about how our brains learn that font isn't relevant to reading and how that relates to philosophical concepts like free will or meaning in life. I'm also not suggesting that Kevin would agree with Vervaeke on his end claims (or vice versa). To the extent they sound similar, it's more on what they are citing rather than their end assertions. And finally, Brett is a nutcase who makes up tailor made theories for whatever, whenever. Do you think that of Vervaeke? Anyway, I will read Kevin's book and see how far off I am. Do you have a referral code I can use?😂
Trees
2024-02-21 04:28:05 +0000 UTCThis is my favourite non-guru DtG episode so far. That we're a system with various points of agency operating at different degrees makes sense to me. Most of us don't suddenly worry we lack free will we drive a known route mindlessly. We get that mulling over what to make for dinner is a better use of scarce attentional resources! My greater self-concept doesn't collapse if I see my thoughts emerge unbidden while meditating either. Does it trouble a CEO if he isn't the author of the ideas raised at a meeting or even thay he won't be personally implementing them, so long as he can call the meeting and make key decisions?
Alex H
2024-02-21 02:44:06 +0000 UTCI think there is a lot more science there. Kevin's book is probably 50-60% just evolutionary stuff about agents. I understand the comparisons but I think it is akin to saying well Bret also argues for adopting an evolutionary lens... true but also completely misleading if the suggestion is this means they are advocating the same thing.
Christopher Kavanagh
2024-02-21 02:41:16 +0000 UTCI'm with Matt, I'm not sure "is there freewill" is a well-formed, meaningful question. The overlap between Kevin's ideas and sense makers is more than superficial. Or at least the overlap with John Vervaeke (who is the only one I've ever followed at length). For example, the way he defines living things as being patterns that persist themselves through time is similar to Vervaeke's autopoiesis. The example about fonts and text is something Vervaeke calls framing, I think. He even ventures into meta cognition as a solution to attention management by organisms, which touches on Vervaeke's trademark relevance realization. Kevin even says "we need a good science of meaning", which is 100% sense maker. Oh and the part about physical reality shaping our language is definitely covered in Awakening from the Meaning Crisis. It's been a couple years since I listened to those lectures. Maybe my memories are too indistinct so it's easier to equivocate, but I was getting strong Vervaeke vibes. Just cooler, with a better accent, no Greek and no fondness for hanging out with big JP and little JP.
Trees
2024-02-21 00:35:04 +0000 UTCIn addition, I would want to know how much randomness at the quantum level leads to appreciable differences at higher levels of reality that allow for the causal slack he is talking about. I appreciate that he is talking from a materialist approach as that matches how I understand the world. And I do follow his ideas about living beings making things happen (being agents), although one could talk about certain chemicals being the necessary factor that must be in place for life to exist.
Linda Sears
2024-02-20 23:08:38 +0000 UTCI wish I understood quantum mechanics better since it appears that Mitchell’s argument about causal slack derives from indeterminacy and/or the probabilistic nature of reality at the quantum level. From my small bit of understanding, quantum mechanics might be deterministic as well, but we don’t know enough yet. However, if quantum mechanics is probabilistic and not deterministic, that is not the same thing as being completely random, which makes wonder how much causal slack there is.
Linda Sears
2024-02-20 22:29:26 +0000 UTCI keep doing this to myself 😂 But the best explanation I can give of how I feel is similar to how I imagine most ethics professors felt hearing Sam Harris hand wave away thousands of years of debate and conceptual analysis on morality before laying out an argument on what morality REALLY is and why everyone else before was so confused. And to top it off, science is gonna help explain it all!!
Zack Katopodis
2024-02-20 21:38:40 +0000 UTCYou know Kevin and Sapolsky spoke directly, you can hear maybe get some satisfaction listening to his objections.
Christopher Kavanagh
2024-02-20 21:18:42 +0000 UTCWe aim to please 😂
Christopher Kavanagh
2024-02-20 21:17:23 +0000 UTCNice, think I'll hang on… but I do love listening to stuff like this when * cough * PEOPLE YOU TEND TO COVER * cough * aren't doing it 😂
Empty_Cognizance
2024-02-20 21:17:20 +0000 UTCYes!
Christopher Kavanagh
2024-02-20 21:15:33 +0000 UTCYou are conflating non-determinism and free will. Universe can be non-determinant and still there can be no free will. Whether effects of atoms (or some more fundamental particles) are random to some extent or determined doesn't change that we are still subject to same laws of physics without ability to violate them. For free will to exist you would have to be able to transcend laws of physics (or change what you mean by "free will" in case of compatibilists).
Tadas
2024-02-20 21:03:08 +0000 UTCIt was far worse than I could have imagined.
Zack Katopodis
2024-02-20 20:49:16 +0000 UTCJust out of curiosity, does this have a video coming later? If so, they just generally tend to feel like more of a “complete” experience and I'd just wait so I'm not hearing the same thing twice. Either way, thanks for cool stuff like this 😄
Empty_Cognizance
2024-02-20 20:34:52 +0000 UTCI don't quite understand Kevin's big bang information argument against determinism. It seems like a basic point for anyone with some experience in computer science or physics that you don't need to store the entire future state of a system in order to generate it. You can write a 20 line or so program that visualizes the Mandlebrot set with its infinite complexity. This program does not have every pixel color of the fractal stored for infinite zoom levels, but upon request they can be calculated from a simple recursion. Another example would be to setup a simple cellular automata that generates novel patterns infinitely. Even just generating the digits of pi ad infinitum with a simple program makes the same point. These examples are all entirely deterministic and the result of letting them run indefinitely is that they will generate an infinite amount of data. However the information required in the initial state is very limited. I mean one of the main appeals with stipulating physical laws is that they capture and explain so much complexity in the world using so little information. It also felt like there was no real intuition or explanation for how the idea of "top-down" causation is supposed to work, or what should motivate us to take it seriously, more than that it kind of feels right? I got the impression throughout that there may be some wishful thinking on the part of Kevin, and bits of information from different fields that may or may not hold up upon scrutiny or produce a coherent argument. I am personally agnostic about free-will, the function of consciousness, determinism and so on, but wasn't quite sold on this take on the matter. Thanks for the episode none the less!
Gustaf Pihl
2024-02-20 19:30:40 +0000 UTC...pretty much by *definition*
Paul Bowman
2024-02-20 18:50:51 +0000 UTCThis was right up my alley. Particularly after the frustration of listening to Harris waffle ignorantly about the "illusion of self" (I won't even mention the lab leak and political stuff!). Not come across Kevin's work before. I will definitely put the book on the reading list. I had a moment of realisation listening to this. There are a few belief systems I've come across in my life that it's not so much that I don't buy them, but more I don't even understand how anybody could possibly believe them. One of them is Calvin's double predestination and another is the people who go around saying there's no such thing as free will and everything from the big bang is inescapably determined. Now I see the two are connected, via the lingering Cartesianism of the dominant modernist ideology. Descartes ofc believed in the clockwork universe of determinism, but defended the Catholic doctrine of free will (against Calvinist predestination + sola fide) by creating the mind-body dualism. As the default modernism moved on from deist rationalism to agnostic empiricism, the dualist domain of the soul & god disappears, leaving the bizarro-world of clockwork determinism and "no free will", despite the fact, as Kevin pointed out at the start, it simply doesn't compute even in basic physics, so it's scientifically baseless. And any sustained, scientifically baseless belief has to be ideological, pretty much by design. And if it's lasting and widespread it must be related to the default doxa, rather than specific doctrinal systems. The "New Atheist" determinists like Dennett et al, are basically Cartesian atheists. Luckily other atheisms are available!
Paul Bowman
2024-02-20 18:49:42 +0000 UTCI am ready to be very frustrated listening to this ep as free-will is my hobby horse, but still excited! If you have somehow missed it, you really should read Galen Strawson from a philosophical perspective. He puts this discussion to bed in my view, but that’s just my view. For a more universal picture, Shaun Nichols at Cornell has a great courses series (available on audible) that spans 24 lectures covering the history of the free will debate and the philosophical and scientific arguments made. But if one must go to science for a fundamentally philosophical question, you could check out Robert Sapolsky on this topic.
Zack Katopodis
2024-02-20 16:13:42 +0000 UTCIn his new book Sapolsky extols the Norwegian kind of prison, where the inmates get “funishment”. Go ahead and read it Emma—he’ll still be one of your favorite science writers, as he is mine!
Lucy
2024-02-20 16:06:18 +0000 UTCThe difficulty with conversations about free will and what the 'I' is that usually we are talking within very narrow definitions. Sam Harris was given extremely specific instructions in locating an 'I' and found it was not there. He has then generalised the specific missing 'I' or 'ghost in the machine' to identity in its multitude of meaning. Rumi and other mystics with a belief in God see the lack of an 'I' as evidence of God; It is not 'me' acting, it is God acting through me or in me or identically with me. This is all fine if you are living in a cave removed from society .... but a bit of an ego trip if you find yourself preaching to others in a concrete way. Dancing free of concepts in the desert does not really help with international conflict. I like very much that this conversation looked what 'I' is beyond the very narrow definition. The conversation also avoided discussing the more philosophical matter of the subjective experience of identity.
Nina Davies
2024-02-20 15:48:44 +0000 UTC"I can resist everything except temptation." Oscar Wilde.
Ymirsdreams
2024-02-20 15:40:12 +0000 UTCI question this guys credentials purely because it's the same institution that gave me a degree
Níall Faughnan
2024-02-20 14:04:56 +0000 UTCI’ve long been on the “determinist” side for many reasons, such as the ones you mentioned, Emma. Other reasons are more personal to me, for example, being an identical twin makes me much more aware of the fact that my personality has been shaped by genetics and environmental factors. I’ve also struggled to figure out where the free will aspect happens, which is similar to my struggle with ideas like a soul. I look forward to hearing Kevin’s ideas.
Linda Sears
2024-02-20 13:20:10 +0000 UTCOh dear. Robert Sapolsky used to be one of my favourite scientists authors. Although I have lost track of him and haven't read his newest book. In his last book 'Behave' he did mention he didn't believe in free will. But I read that he meant that in more of a social justice way rather than in a more philosophical/existential way. Maybe I missed something. But I recall he used it as an argument against the US punative justice system. Because he argued crime comes from poverty and trauma and mental illness. So it makes zero sense to punish people when their actions were not really under their control and plus the jail system seems to just train petty criminals to become more hardened criminals. I was mostly on board with that argument. It's something I ponder myself quite a lot because I have found myself with some people in my life who are very hard to handle but also very obviously mentally unwell. I think maybe to me the non free will argument makes sense because as a sort of lefty woke adjacent person myself and my friends already tend to view the world in terms of unfair privileges and unfair disadvantages. Like here in Australia the jail system is full of indigenous people. Some of that is doubtlessly police prejudice but also indigenous communities have far more drug use and crime than middle class white communities. But obviously the indigenous people are not in any way to blame for that. It's colonialism and the backward government. Not that I believe we don't have any free will at all. But I suspect life circumstances have a bigger impact than free will for most of us. Just my non expert ramblings. Maybe Robert Sapolsky would be a good subject for a future decoding? He seems to be straying out of just science and into a more political direction.
Emma
2024-02-20 10:10:21 +0000 UTCThank you🌸🌿
Lillie
2024-02-20 05:27:38 +0000 UTC
