Motivations behind question: Novel. I’m curious to hear what Peter Singer thinks about arguments that explain away free will due to prior causality, and how this is reconciled with the Drowning Child argument. I still want to do good, and believe the argument cannot be falsified, but I’m curious to hear his thinking. For me, I believe doing good is right for a number of reasons, and whether or not free will exists, it doesn’t matter to me (choice or not), because I will donate, and share EA, and buy into the argument.
Whether I had any choice in the matter… well who knows?
I would love to hear what Peter thinks about the free will debate and the ideas posed by Robert Sapolsky in Determined.
Epistemic Status of Paraphrase below: Read Sam Harris’ Free Will essay, and listened to a number of podcasts on free will, as well as this one mentioned partially.
For those who don’t know, Sapolsky is claiming a hard deterministic stance, and explains why downward causation still does not account for the idea of free will, because for this common idea to exist, the constituents would need to somehow become different. For example, wetness is an emergent property of water because wetness only exists with many water molecules involved… but this doesn’t mean that somehow the water molecules become O2H instead of H2O when they become wet. But this is what is being claimed in free will debates. Our consciousness doesn’t magically exhibit structural changes bearing free will. The feeling of free will arises but not some structural change.
Anyway, that’s my paraphrase of what I heard in the conversation between Sam Harris and Sapolsky recently. Figured it was worth a shot posting this question, but I understand it is somewhat irrelevant and respect if it is passed over.
Motivations behind question: Novel. I’m curious to hear what Peter Singer thinks about arguments that explain away free will due to prior causality, and how this is reconciled with the Drowning Child argument. I still want to do good, and believe the argument cannot be falsified, but I’m curious to hear his thinking. For me, I believe doing good is right for a number of reasons, and whether or not free will exists, it doesn’t matter to me (choice or not), because I will donate, and share EA, and buy into the argument.
Whether I had any choice in the matter… well who knows?
I would love to hear what Peter thinks about the free will debate and the ideas posed by Robert Sapolsky in Determined.
Epistemic Status of Paraphrase below: Read Sam Harris’ Free Will essay, and listened to a number of podcasts on free will, as well as this one mentioned partially.
For those who don’t know, Sapolsky is claiming a hard deterministic stance, and explains why downward causation still does not account for the idea of free will, because for this common idea to exist, the constituents would need to somehow become different. For example, wetness is an emergent property of water because wetness only exists with many water molecules involved… but this doesn’t mean that somehow the water molecules become O2H instead of H2O when they become wet.
But this is what is being claimed in free will debates. Our consciousness doesn’t magically exhibit structural changes bearing free will. The feeling of free will arises but not some structural change.
Anyway, that’s my paraphrase of what I heard in the conversation between Sam Harris and Sapolsky recently. Figured it was worth a shot posting this question, but I understand it is somewhat irrelevant and respect if it is passed over.
Cheers,
and I do truly hope this finds you well