Rev Left Radio - Free Will: Determinism, Compatibilism, and Philosophy of Mind

Episode Date: October 21, 2021

Corey Mohler (Existential Comics) and Zach Weinersmith (Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal) join Breht to discuss free will, determinism, the role of consciousness, the role of the self, and the implications of the debate for society. Corey also articulates his compatibillist position as Zach and Breht raise questions and offer possible critiques.  Check out Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal here: https://www.smbc-comics.com/ Follow Zach on twitter: https://twitter.com/ZachWeiner Check out Existential Comics here: http://existentialcomics.com/ Follow Corey on Twitter @ExistentialComs Outro Music: "Freewill" by Rush ----- Support Rev Left Radio: https://www.patreon.com/RevLeftRadio or make a one time donation: PayPal.me/revleft LEARN MORE ABOUT REV LEFT RADIO: www.revolutionaryleftradio.com

Hello everybody and welcome back to RevLeft Radio. We have a fun episode today. It veers more into the philosophical than the political. But I have on Zach Wienersmith and Corey Moller from Saturday morning breakfast cereal comics and existential comics respectively. Corey from Existential Comics has been on the show a couple of times. So longtime RevLev listeners are probably familiar with him. anybody in the philosophy community more broadly have probably come across both of the comics represented here and they're both really great if you haven't definitely go check them out but yeah

we have it we have both these these folks on to talk about free will corey reached out to me you know he's like this would be fun to do i agree this is something you know i always like covering topics that you wouldn't necessarily think that a you know primarily left-wing political philosophy podcast would cover and it's always fun to have Corey on to shoot the shit in general and he wanted to sort of articulate and defend a position within this debate called compatibilism and so we sort of go through it it can get sort of advanced at times as a lot of these philosophical discussions can but i do try to you know set the basic terms and definitions and lay things on the table up front to help people who are not used to this field of inquiry to sort

of orient themselves to the overall debate, but even if some of the stuff goes above your head, other stuff will get your attention and make you think. And overall, it's a really fun episode. In this episode, we do mention philosophical zombies. And I'm pretty sure Corey defines it, but I can't quite remember if we just sort of breathes past that. But just to be very clear, a philosophical zombie is a thought experiment or a device within philosophy that we use to think through problems surrounding consciousness. And so a philosophical zombie, is somebody who outwardly, if you were to come across them in the world, they would seem like a totally awake, aware, coherent human being.

But on the inside, there's no consciousness. Is that even possible? Is that what artificial intelligence would be? Where outwardly they would be indistinguishable from somebody who has consciousness just based on their behaviors, their replies, how they act. But inwardly, the lights are off, as it were. And so we use that device a little bit to think through some of the issues here. But yeah, so definitely if you haven't, check out Saturday morning breakfast cereal comics and existential comics.

And here's my discussion with Zach and Corey on the debate surrounding free will. And we talk about consciousness, compatibilism, determinism, libertarian free will, the judicial system, etc. It's really, really interesting, fun conversation. Enjoy. All right. Well, I'm Corey Moeller. I'm best known for making existential comics. And, yeah, here today to talk about free will. And I'm Zach Meener-Smith.

I draw a comic called Saturday morning breakfast cereal and a couple other things that are not as popular. Yeah, well, thank you both for coming on the show. Really excited. We have two comics on to talk about free will. But, no, this is a really interesting, really interesting conversation. And, you know, I have a philosophy degree. I studied free will in college. I haven't really engaged with the debate in a while.

so I'm excited to sort of get into it with both of you. But, you know, before we dive into the details, can you maybe just give our audience a general picture of the debate around free will and why philosophers have argued about it for centuries, if not longer? Yeah, I mean, it's pretty straightforward. This goes back to Aristotle and Lucretius famously argued about it. And to be honest, the arguments haven't changed all that much over the years. We have it in an internal sensation that we are free.

that's very integrated into our conscious experience of the world. I have an internal experience of myself wanting to raise my hand up, and then my hand raises up. But then when we go out and look in the world, everything in the world that we have ever seen seems to operate on a cause and effect basis. There's a prior cause that fully determines the effect. So when you start applying that to ourselves,

there becomes a very strong tension, like how is it free, how does it seem to be so free, when everything seems to be made from prior causes, right? And it's been about 2,000 years, and really very little progress has been made on this issue. So I figured, you know, take a couple bozos who draw webcomics for a living and we'll wrap it up at an hour.

Zach, anything to add to that? I am the Simplicio here. I'm just here to respond. So I have nothing intelligent to add to that. Yeah, I guess I should say, the reason I'm inviting Zach on is because he sometimes tweets about he's like a more maybe scientific-minded person or educated more in science than me and I'll see his tweets sometimes and he has a very this kind of obnoxious reductionist tendency that a lot of philosophers

hate about scientists we just say oh there's only particles consciousness and it's just made of particles math is made of particles you know so I've invited him on to sort of be like the audience that I want to at least attempt to convince him that I doubt doubt is going to be Yeah, well, that's an interesting and fun dynamic. So I'm excited to dive into it. I do have to ask, though, each of you, you know, I think, you know, Corey comes more from a philosophical direction, Zach, more from a scientific one. How did each of you become interested in this particular topic? I mean, I probably like the one area of philosophy. Like, I'm mostly interested in the history of philosophy. I actually like that better than philosophy proper. But the one thing I really do get worked up is over philosophy of mind. And it's because it's one of these problems that it's like, Like, it's amazing how different the opinions are. And not only that, but how obviously wrong some of them are. Like, oh, everything's conscious. People like David Chalmers say, oh, thermostats are conscious, Dan, Dan,

and you're like, this is obviously wrong. But you can't figure out why. Philosophy of mind is just a very difficult problem, and it's still debate. So that's like the one area that I actually am interested in and think about. And, of course, it's very tied into free will. For sure. Zach? I would say I have similar interest.

I'm also interested in it from the perspective of one computer science and thinking about, like, what does it mean to think and that sort of thing and the limits of the ability of any kind of thing in the universe to, you know, compute certain types of problems. And I don't know if Corey agrees that has any bearing on consciousness. I'm also interested in the fact that we study artificial intelligence and we seem to very quickly bump into these problems that you think would be easy to solve. You're perhaps familiar with the famous summer study, I think in the 50s where they thought they would have it wrapped up in a few months. And it's taken longer. And so for me, that's like an interesting entry into these questions about consciousness

and free will, which is like, you know, it's, as Corey said, apparently a reduction about this. I think of these things as machines, but then we try to build these machines, and it turns out to be, like, incredibly complicated, and I find that interesting. But I, you know, I'm also interested in these sort of more general case philosophical aspects as well. Cool. Yeah, really interesting coming from it out of the direction of computer science and artificial intelligence for sure. I guess I want to ask, too, what's at stake in this debate exactly, like, what implications does this debate have for the real world, you know, morally, legally, socially or otherwise? Yeah, I mean, typically the main thing is moral blameworthiness is at stake

because if somebody's not free, if somebody's just a machine, like we don't morally blame computers when they screw up, right? Because we think they don't have free will. We think they don't have consciousness. So when your computer screws up, you might get angry, but you blame Microsoft. You don't blame the computer, right? Oh, stupid computer, you know? If humans are basically just biological machines and consciousness doesn't really have any effect on anything and everything's just determined by prior causes. In what way can we morally blame anyone? So that's basically why people are particularly interested in. And of course, legally, then it would be like, what would that mean for the law? I mean, I don't know. It would be a totally different word. Like if everybody

actually bought into the idea, which is funny because it's one of these debates that no matter how much you convince yourself that there's no free will, you can't actually convince yourself. Right. Everybody still doesn't believe it, even if they believe it. But if everybody did believe that we didn't have free will, we would have to totally restructure society, probably. Yeah, without a doubt. And there's obviously the computer example, but there's also the example of animals who we don't, you know, say, have moral responsibility. And even, you know, children, we say don't have at least as much moral responsibility as an adult, for example. So there's certainly a spectrum, and it does seem interesting where we decide to draw the lines.

But to your point about the legal system, I think the Supreme Court, explicitly says that, you know, free will is like a universal and fundamental premise of our entire judicial system. And that determinism, you know, is like an existential threat to the, the entire approach of our legal system. So in some official Supreme Court documentation, that argument is actually explicitly made. And I thought that was kind of interesting as well. So I think that that does have, that's like the main thrust is legally and how we hold people responsible for their behavior. Do you have anything to add to that, Zach? My instant reaction when Corey said, you know, we don't blame computers. And I agree, you're right.

You know, my computer screws up. I get angry. I don't say, how dare you. But so that's the moral aspect. But as to the legal aspect, like, suppose there was a killer robot with a gun on its face running around shooting people. Like, I agree we wouldn't blame it. But we would have, like, we would behave like in a legal way. We would confine it or like make it stop doing what it was doing. So we're like even if we assume it doesn't have free will, we could still take, you know, like moral-like behaviors toward it. Does that make sense? Sure. So like if there's a murderer who is on the loose and he doesn't have free will, and again, like Brett was saying, like there's a, it's like our legal system has a sort

of sliding scale. Like you can have a mental illness that can excuse someone morally, but you might still want to lock them in prison if they're still murdering people. But the moral blameworth part has to go away. So you might still. have, you might still have prisons, but they wouldn't be punitive, right? There'd be no sense of we're going to punish you. They would be purely for the good of society, I guess. But see, that's what interests me is like, I'm one of these people who thinks like, you know, I'm not a huge fan of the punitive approach to justice. I prefer to the extent possible either rehabilitate or, you know, keep out of society as opposed to like, just that like, we want to

inflict justice on you because, you know, that's an aspect of the universe that we like. So, so meaning like, I guess the only that interests me is like behaviorally, if you're not a believer in some abstract sense of justice via punishment, do you think you'd behave any differently if you did or didn't believe in free will? Well, John Searle likes to say, you know, even if you believe in determinism, when you go into a restaurant, you don't just sit down and wait for the decision of what you want off the menu. Right?

So it's hard to like say it's actually like probably the funniest question in the history of philosophy. If you don't believe in free will, what would you do differently? Right. Right. You're like, what do you even ask it? It's a very funny question. But again, free will is so baked into our experience that we can't help but ask silly

questions like that because we can't interpret our behavior, our own behavior any other way, except for the, through the lens of free will. So yeah, let's go ahead and move forward and lay some of these basic concepts. And the three that I really want to cover in order is free will determinism and compatibilism, which Corey will be defending. So let's start with free will. I know we've already touched on basically what it is and I know people intuitively feel as if they have it, even if they intellectually are sort of suspicious of it, ontologically or whatever. But what exactly is free will and what are the most robust arguments in favor of its full existence or what in philosophy we call liberty? carry in free will. Sure. And it's not a popular opinion, obviously, among philosophers today to think that there is a kind of metaphysical free will where you're free in a real, like, you can somehow not have a causal chain in any sense, broken free of it. It's hard to actually even conceive of what that means, though. Like a lot of philosophers say you can't even really talk about what that would mean because it's, we see our minds seem to only have two ways of thinking about things, which is

that things are determined or they're random. But there are two approaches, of course. One is sort of just, if you're a religious person, you say, hey, we have souls. Souls are immaterial somehow. They're somehow totally cleavaged from the material world, like a duelist kind of thing. And these souls are free.

So while our bodies might be determined, our bodies are really controlled by these souls, right? And that's like they're like somehow spooky, right? That's the thing about free will. Like libertarianism, you need some spookiness in there, right? something has to be spooky whether it's a ghost and then if you're not religious there's only two ways to go like there actually are two things that are highly spooky in uh like in the physical sciences the first is consciousness which is completely doesn't seem like it's physical at all it does

seem at least spooky you can't get any grip on it you can't really do scientific tests on it and of course the other spooky thing is quantum mechanics so if you want to be a libertarian about free will, you can sort of combine consciousness and the spookiness of that with the spookiness of quantum mechanics work. The reason quantum mechanics are spooky is because causality drops out of the equation. Like I've heard scientists say on the quantum level, you can't even use causality as a description because time doesn't have meaning. So you can say two events are interlaced, but they're not, one didn't cause the other, you can't really talk about causation on the quantum level. So you can say, look, there's two spooky things. We don't really have

that great of a reason to think. They could interact this way, but you could say consciousness could have a downward effect on the brain via quantum mechanics, via manipulating the spookiness of quantum mechanics so the normal laws of physics don't apply to it. And so it's like that kind of gives you a hook. But again, this is not very compelling to most people, because we don't actually really have a reason to think this. And if it were true, there wouldn't. How, like, how would you detect it if it were true? So we don't have a reason not to think it either, either, but it's just kind of too stupid for most people to believe, you know. Zach, any input there?

Not really. I basically, I actually just described, which is I just, there's an old joke maybe you know among quantum computing people, which is something like you'll often hear people say some version of consciousness is weird and quantum mechanics is weird. So by the transit property, consciousness is quantum mechanics. But you still have to demonstrate, like, what is the, like, how do we get from, you know, the weird behavior of a single electron to the idea that I get to pick which sandwich I'm ordering off the menu? There's obviously, like, a lot in between there. Right. And I would actually say it's, like, it's probably a more popular view among quantum mechanics physicists than it is among philosophers. But I would think so.

It's not very popular among either. But I would think a few do genuinely believe it. Yeah. And I haven't heard of really any John Stroll a little bit. He's like, well, maybe, but I don't think he really believes it. And then it's just not a very popular. Yeah. Yeah, I think the most popular form of it in our, you know, regular society is probably, like you said, a religious dualism where they assume that, you know, the soul exists, et cetera.

And you're judged, heaven or hell based on your actual actions. And so you have free will because God gave it to you. With the quantum mechanic, you know, jump, it's obviously, you know, because macro physics is so clearly determined. But quantum mechanics seems much, you know, much more. as you would say, you know, spooky or obviously like there's the indeterminacy and the randomness at the level of quantum mechanics. So people wanting to argue for a libertarian free will, you know, do tend to turn in that direction. But as you say, there's plenty of problems with it. And I think Searle talks about, you know, trying to separate the indeterminacy from the randomness and, you know,

scale it up. And it's a, it's a weird attempt at that point. Yeah, it seems pretty stretched then. For sure. So we have libertarian free will where, you know, we're not constrained. pretty much at all. And as you said, to really take that to its logical conclusion would present a whole bunch of weird issues. Like, we're clearly confined by gravity, for example. So where do you draw the line, et cetera? But on the opposite end of this debate is determinism. So what is determinism and what are like the most robust basic arguments in favor of it? I mean, it's pretty straightforward. Everything that we've ever observed in the history has either been straightforward, causally determined, right, or in quantum mechanic cases, random, but when you use the word

random, you have to understand it's tightly constrained probabilistic randomness. It's not like anything can happen at any time, right? So neither of those things leave any room for free will, where free will means an agent has the ability to do otherwise than what they did, right, aside from maybe randomly, but random isn't any more free than determined. Right. So you say everything that we've ever observed behaves like this. We're in the universe. We're part of the universe. We're either causally determined or 99.9% causally determined with a tiny bit of randomness,

sort of jumping around at the micro level that doesn't really affect the fact that there is a causal chain in the universe that everything is part of. Ergo, no free will. Is that anything you want to add to that? Oh, gosh. Not exactly. I would tend more toward the position that I would. I find that the idea of free will to be like, like, incoherent.

I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I feel like it's, it's too slippery. I haven't met a definition I liked, and, like, and I would also, like, I mean, I don't think this violates anything, um, Corey has said, but I, I view, like, I, I view the universe as if, not necessarily deterministic, but mechanistic. So, meaning, like, there, there's a sequence of events that might obey, like, you know, a tree of possibilities. There might be, you know, what, um, computer scientists call states. space, meaning the state of all possibilities, might be what the universe is made of.

So it's not deterministic because you have to, like, plinko your way down one path. It's still mechanistic. Like, there's no sort of like, you know, pixie dust at some step. So, I mean, I guess in that since I am deterministic, but I just don't, you know, like, like years ago, I went on a Dan Dennett binge. And Dan, Dan, it's obviously a compatibilist. And all I became convinced of by the end was that I had no idea what it meant to say free will other than if you want to sort of.

kind of, to me, very weird, Dan-Dennett definition of free will is like, you know, if a monkey throws poop at you, you can dodge it, and it feels like you made a choice. But, but, but, but, so any sort of like deeper sense, I, I, I, I, I, I, I don't understand what, what, I, I, I, I, I don't understand what is being asked of me to believe. I see. Yeah, so the, the very concept of free will is sort of incoherent is, it's not like you have a position on it that is assuming a definition that we can agree to, et cetera. Um, and, and we'll get a little more into both of your particular positions and maybe have a little back and forth between them here in a second. But we've covered free will. We've covered determinism. So what is

compatibilism? And do you think that people, most people sort of intuitively adhere to this position, even if they don't necessarily know it as such? I know you mentioned a little bit of that, Corey, in our email. Yeah, that's the funny thing about compatibilism that always annoys me is that everybody always says they're changing the definition of free will. And I think it's the other way around. I think everybody is a compatibilist when they're born. I think the legal system is a compatibilist legal system. It's not a libertarian free will. And I think the people in the Supreme Court are confused about that. So again, let's start again, let's back up with the definition of free will. And we're just going to grant the religious point of view. There's a spooky

ghost. He controls our actions, right? It's separate from the body. And our identity, this is the important part. Our identity is the ghost. Now, here's the funny thing is, like, if you think about ghosts, this is why, like, I was making fun of the word supernatural on Twitter the other day, where people will ask, do you believe in the supernatural, and what the supernatural is is just everything that doesn't exist. That's what it means. Like, if ghosts existed, they would be natural. Like, what do you mean? You would go look at the ghost, and you would be able to do science about the ghost. The ghost would have properties, right? Supernatural, means things that don't exist, right? That's what it means. So the ghost has certain properties.

One of the properties is a will and it uses that will to make decisions. Okay. That's free will. That's like if you grant everything spooky, grant everything religious, that's free will. Now let's look at what we actually have. Well, we have a conscious mind. The conscious mind makes decisions and those decisions have effects on the world and it controls our behavior. That which we are, we are, we are a conscious being or we are our body even you could say and consciousness is somehow part of our body that's obviously true right yeah we are that and that which we are makes the decisions that's all freedom can mean they can't mean anything else because nothing else is even conceivable the ghost has to have properties right and those properties have to determine the choices and i think

everybody believes us and i think like there's plenty of evidence for it like it's the premise of time travel movies. Compatibilism is the premise. When they go back to the, in back to the future, when they go back in time, can you imagine if the movie had a libertarian free will? They would go back in time and everybody would start making different decisions without the protagonists interfering because, hey, they're free. One time they're going to make this decision. Next time they're going to make a different decision. The audience would be absolutely baffled by this. And not only would they be baffled, I think they would internally feel like it was less free. Like if we go back in time and I decided.

to marry my wife and we just go back in time and I see next time I decide not to, the decision feels disconnected from myself now. It feels like it's being made randomly. What was I feel the decision came internally from the properties of my being. I want that to be how the decision is made. And that's what feels free. We feel alienated from our freedom when something external to us is making the decision, right? And this is how the law works. So like say, I were a super villain, I were a webcomic super villain, right? And I make a tiny microchip, and I implant it in Zach Wiener's brain, because I'm jealous of his comic. And what the microchip does is it modifies his brain to tell really bad jokes, right?

So now his web comic is just a bunch of bad jokes over and over. And he has to go in front of the judge, and the judge says, look, Mr. Wiener, what the hell's going on with your comics? All these jokes are terrible. They were really good before. Now they're terrible. and then he figures out it's the chip, and that'll let him off the hook, right? Because they'll say something external to my being is making the decisions. When I'm free, only my internal being is responsible for the decisions.

Now, it's determined because that's the only way we can conceive the world, right? And the other point I would say about the deterministic point of view that's really funny that people will say is they'll say, everything has to obey the laws of the universe. And this is sort of like the supernatural argument, where the laws of the universe are once again, like the natural, when you talk about the natural world, that includes everything that exists. Everything that exists is natural by definition, because that's what it means. It means everything that exists. The laws of the universe are the same. Everything obeys the laws of the universe by definition. Nothing can disobey the laws of the universe no matter what we observe. If something does something different than the laws of the universe,

That is the laws of the universe, right? We have to change the laws to match whatever happens. So there is no possible sense in which anything like free will cannot even conceptually disobey the laws of the universe. It's definitionally true. So the freedom that we're supposedly lacking is, for one, inconceivable. I don't think you can lack anything that's inconceivable, right? I can't lack round square. it can't be an illusion, right? Because you can't have an illusion about something that's inconceivable either. I can't think that I saw a round square and then only discover it was a square. It's inconceivable. Like our minds can't even conceive

of round squares. And nor can they conceive of breaking the laws of universe. It's a limit to our mind. So the only type of freedom that's even conceivable is the freedom that is used in everyday life, that everybody agree,

sort of in society agrees, is freedom, which is that which you are, your being, is determining your actions. So that's basically compatibilism to me. But that of which you are, it is how it is regardless of any, you don't have any control over that. But the fact that a choice or a desire comes from within as opposed to being constrained or imposed from without, is the difference there? Or am I missing? That's basically it. Okay. Choices are caused by us. We caused the choices, right? And that's what freedom is.

Again, it's like nothing else could even be described to me. You can't have a spooky ghost breaking the laws of the universe because if ghosts existed, they would be part of the universe and that would be the laws of the universe, whatever they did. So how can you break the laws of the universe with a spooky ghost? You can't do anything. So freedom has to be that which is internal to us is causing our actions, which is, I believe, what happens.

And I think also it is refutable that, like, we are our consciousness. We're not our body, right? Typically the way we talk about it. So, like, if I'm sleepwalking or something and I punch someone in the face, they don't blame me. They're like, oh, you didn't really do it. Your body just kind of reacted, right? Yeah. Our consciousness is actually our identity, not our brain.

Even if people are like, oh, we are our brain and stuff. It's really our consciousness is the way we most typically think of it. so in order to save this kind of thing we do have to say that our consciousness has an effect on the world and isn't purely doing nothing i would say that would be the one thing that could refute it and i think that's a scientific fact that could be discoverable okay yeah we'll get to that in a second Zach do you have any any thoughts or push back on anything that was just said there yeah i have i have a couple thoughts um and you know forgive me if i if i if i misconstitutional anything um uh so it seems me part of this is just like yeah i i i i totally agree with everything you say about how we can't conceive of a universe where there's free will in the spooky sense. But like, I think, and I'm sure this annoys you, but like, I think to most people, that's just what they mean by determinism. I agree, you're right that most people are intuitive compatibilist in the sense that you described about, like, time travel. Because, like, but I think that's just the function of, like, I don't know what it's like

to be human, right? I don't see why you couldn't do a version of Back to the Future where instead of exploring the single timeline that you existed on, you skipped some other, you know, physician in the multiverse, where you would actually experience a totally different set of choices being made. I think that, as you say, that would be deeply counterintuitive to a human, but I didn't see what's wrong with it. And the other thing I had, and I'm sure you're totally familiar with this and have a response to it, but I thought I should bring it up because I feel like there's going to be feeling the audience of the same. reaction, which is, as I'm sure you know, there are like the Gazanaga experiments showing that you can split someone's brain, and you basically have two consciousnesses that don't understand that they are two consciousnesses, and in fact, they can fabulate unit. And there are similar experiments. I was just, I was just reading about one today in which, you know, these

experiments, no doubt, where something like 60% of the time, if you ask someone to make a choice between A and B, you can predict in advance via brain scans, what they'll pick. I was just reading experiment today where you can actually send a nerve signal to the hand they weren't going to use to pick something and they will confabulate a story about what their intention was. And so

I'm skeptical of the idea that you say we are our consciousness, but I don't know who this we is. I mean, I have an intuitive sense of who we is. I think I'm Jack Wienersmith, but like, you know, experiments like these convince me that a brain is a little more like a parliament than a guy. And so

I guess do you think that has any implications for this idea of like consciousness, like the experience of free choice or consciousness as meaningful. Yeah, it's actually, I love that. You say it's more like a parliament than a guy because one of the things that actually challenge the conception of free will to me is like Dostoevsky's novels where he deals with where you have like a two, two, like in the Brothers Karamazov, he says, oh, we are both the Madonna and the insect. That's the nature of a, like, I'm both this great person and this foul. foul beast and they're battling it out together in my brain to try to be the one who makes the

decision, right? And we talk like that all the time, like internal struggles, right? Or like you say, there can be psychological experiments, well, they'll trick people into making choices and then people will make up stories afterwards to say. But I mean, and actually the idea of an internal struggle is really a bizarre, that is another thing that's very hard to conceptualize, right? What does it mean to have an internal struggle and then one side come out victorious. But I do say, I mean, I guess these experiments aside where they split the brain and stuff, that's really hard to understand. And I think if we could, once we have a more in-depth science of consciousness, which maybe

will never come, we can understand it better. I have a real hard time understanding what it means. But there is a certain sense, at least from your own point of view internally, of a very unified consciousness. Right. Oh yeah. Absolutely. It's like not like two people's brains if you just put them next to each other aren't one brain, you know. Um, so that thing that is the unified consciousness is definitely making decisions. And it appears that it's having a downward effect on our brain. Right. So like unconscious people and conscious people behave very differently. One of them can understand things a lot better. One of them, you know, like the consciousness itself seems to sort of have an effect on the brain, even though it's being maybe. created by the brain as well. As far as the experiment about like, yeah, yeah, about like they did one

where they could predict people's thing and it got reported. So like they'll have people say pick either A or B and then supposedly the brain scientists could figure it out before you were consciously aware of it. I mean, this is to me, I get this is the only thing they can do, but they're not asking people to make a choice.

They're asking you to make a random selection. Right. When I experience freedom, it's not, so like another thing is like a baseball pitcher will start his swing before he's consciously aware that the ball was pitched, right? But we don't make a decision to swing at the baseball. That's not like a conscious decision. When we talk about freedom, it's not like I chose to swing at the baseball while I consciously saw the ball coming towards me. It's like he chose to play baseball. Like our conscious mind, like our brain does all sorts of things other than our conscious deliberation.

so like asking someone to pick two random numbers and then being surprised that like they delegated it to the you know dev random part of their brain i don't think they're saying well i i i agree with that i'm talking about i think a slightly different thing which is the confabulation part yeah the person has convinced themselves yeah yeah i don't really have a good answer to that because it's just so confusing i think what does it mean to like i i totally agree go ahead yeah what does it mean to be tricked about that your consciousness like I just I don't think we're at any kind of level of understanding what that means to be honest like so I actually don't have a good answer to that maybe you can split someone's brain

and it would cause two identities right and I think that's perfectly fine with compatibilism both of them would have free will in the same body right but so that what's weird to me about that and maybe um um um bro it would take it would it would be good to like pause a second explain like the gazana experiment real question because like I think it's really interesting. So just very quickly, like, I'll probably get the detail slightly wrong, but I'll get the sense of it right. So, like, there are patients who, for, like, medical reasons, will have their corpus pholosum severed. That's the connection between the two hemispheres of your brain. And they don't, you know, they don't have afterwards some sort of sense of like, oh, there's two

brains in my head right now. They basically have a normal life experience, but you can do these weird tricks where there was a famous one, I think it went like this. They would take a lady and they showed her left eye, which is connected to a right hemisphere. I think it was a picture of a naked woman, something like this. And what she did is she laughed. But the language part of the brain is on the left side. So you can ask the person, why did you laugh? And remember the left side has not seen the picture. But the person will confabulate a reason they laughed and will not mention having seen a naked lady picture. Right. So they have had the conscious experience, I think you'd have to say of having laughed. You know, they'll make up a story. Like I was thinking

of this hilarious Garfield I read the other day. You know, they'll make up a story. But they're not line. They're confabulating. They have the conscious experience of having laughed about this thing. And so I have trouble with any appeal to the sort of unified experience of consciousness that it can be like just divided and then the two halves can be confused into thinking they're one. I agree with what you say. We don't have like a science of this. But like, I mean, if consciousness lives somewhere and then you can just like with surgery make it live two places, I mean, that seems, that seems a little weird for the idea that there's this sort of this sort of entity called consciousness that, that is like meaningful separate from the brain

if you can just do this little trick to it. Okay, I'm sorry, I wanted to add one other thing. Just, just real quick, so you've mentioned, and you're right to say like two brains next to each other are not like a different entity, they're two separate unities, but I think that's actually not quite true. There's actually a guy named Miguel Nicolilis who did this experiment that's incredibly unethical and should not have been allowed, where he basically wired rat brains together into like a single Uber brain

and they did find they were offloading tasks to each other. And I suspect there's no way you would ever be allowed to do this, but I suspected there's some way you could like combine your and my brain so that they could just talk directly to each other. We might start offloading tests. Like maybe one brain would take all the motor test or something. I don't know. But like, you know, it, for the idea of unified consciousness, it's weird to me that we can divide it and then maybe combine it too if it's like a

real thing. So what's your response to that? Yeah, I mean, keep in mind the compatulous philosophers are materialists down to the core. They're mostly not dualists. So people like think John Searle and these people are dualists when they first hear about him because he thinks the consciousness has an effect on the world and has distinctive properties from the physical world like it can understand semantics. But no, no, everybody understands the consciousness is part of the brain. So consciousness is either generated by the brain,

completely, I mean, completely. I like to say, like, the reason consciousness isn't the brain, a lot of people want to give it a straight up identity is like, um, Beethoven's fifth symphony isn't the piano, right? It's not the piano, and it's not even the music. It's like, the music and the piano and the symphony are three

different things. Just because the piano is generated. the music doesn't mean the music is the piano. So consciousness has clearly been created by our brains. Nobody denies that. And with that in mind, I don't think it's surprising at all that altering our brains severely will severely alter our consciousness. We don't have a unified perception because we have some spooky identity. It's because that's the way consciousness works when it's created by the brain. You cut the brain in half, you get two consciousnesses. I don't see a problem with that because it's obvious that the brain is wholly responsible for consciousness

in some sense, right? It creates it, and then maybe consciousness pushes back down to the brain. You know, it's like consciousness is the deliberative part of the brain. Like I said, the brain has lots of responsibilities, and consciousness is one of them. It's the one that allows us to sort of understand what's going on and be like a director and understand things and make decisions. Yeah, so I'm not surprised if you cut a brain in half,

or if you combine two brains, like, wire them in carefully, it would have severe implications to the consciousness that is being created by that brain. I think that would be part of the compatibilist story, actually. I guess the one sticking point that would be, like, I guess, like, at the most fundamental, the thing that hits me is the idea that, like, I agree that I absolutely have the perception of unity, and I have the perception of other people's unity. But, like, you know, I have all sorts of perceptions, I'm sure, or wrong, right?

I'm sure I have, like, political beliefs that have I, like, actually did more research about them. I would have to change them. And, like, I'm sure I have beliefs about, like, friends in my life that if I learned more, I would change my relationship. I'm sure, like, and, of course, we can all pinpoint people who we just know have, like, crazy wrong beliefs, you know? So, like, why, why is the experience of unity, why is it trustworthy?

Well, I don't think it's just, I mean, obviously, you know, there's some people who don't. I mean, we're going to, I guess talk about this in a little bit, but. Right. Yeah, well, maybe we can just move on to the next question about, we're going to talk about. So, like, identity, in order to have freedom, you have to have, like I'm saying your identity is your consciousness, right? And your identity creates the decisions. Now, there's an obvious problem. The identity part has to be real.

that can't be an illusion or there's no freedom, right? That's a big problem because identity is actually something a little slipperier than, like, we know we're conscious, but is there a unified identity and is there a unified identity over time? Those are harder questions to answer. Yeah, and we will definitely get to that. I'll just throw out a sort of, you know, maybe counter argument coming from a determinist, you know, perspective, which says, you know, even if we have, like, you know, just grant that we have this unified consciousness and, you know, you're making this argument for compatibilism,

the belief or a desire or a choice comes, you know, organically up through me internally with no, you know, obvious external restraints. But then again, I don't have any control or say or freedom to choose what desire pops up in me, what two choices pop up in me, what both beliefs I have. Like, I have beliefs that are categorized on the left, and I can come up with a whole bunch of rationalizations as to why I have those beliefs, but I didn't, I can't just choose to be on the right. Like, you know, I can't choose my beliefs. I do have these beliefs and I can defend them, but the fact that I don't really control that I have these beliefs in the first place, you know, it seems like whether we're talking desires, beliefs, choices, or anything else

internal, that these are still determined and they sort of emerge out of the darkness that I don't, I don't, you know, reach into and I certainly don't have any control over. Am I missing something or how would you respond to that general critique? Right. Well, it's like saying I can't choose to change my own nature, right? Right. Like, I can't choose to, like I can, I'm out there choosing, but I can't choose to change myself. And it's like, this is obviously kind of a slippery one because in a more weak sense,

obviously we can choose to change. We see people change their natures all the time. And people can give up alcohol and, you know, become a different person. So actually, that's a funny phrase. I'm a different person than I was five years ago. People mean it kind of literally sometimes. So we can change our nature, but we can't, we are often, you know, freedom is a spectrum. Like I think everybody agrees to this, like freedom in the everyday use is a spectrum.

Like if somebody, like alcohol, if we're addicted to something, we have a limited ability to stop doing it, right? And we kind of make our nature over time as well. Like you practice certain things. You practice like maybe you practice being kind to other people. Maybe you have a nasty disposition. And you say, I'm going to practice being nicer to everyone. And over a 10-year period, you find yourself a nicer person, right? So you can change your nature.

But you can't, it's not like you're omnipotently free, right? Even people like Jean-Paul Sart, who sort of thought you were in a sense, it's not. Like you can just wake up one day and be a completely other person. But again, that's what you would want, I think, for freedom. People often, like, when they talk about freedom, the freedom that most aligns with their nature is the things that they feel are most free. So, like, if you do something that you hardly ever do, like, and you're like, I usually would never do that. You almost feel like you didn't make the choice, like you were in a weird state of mind or something. The things that we feel that we are most responsible for are the things that we feel.

are most aligned with our nature as we try to make it, right? That's what we say, oh, I'm doing this. I'm responsible for, say, running the marathon, right? Say I broke the world record for the marathon time. I would feel responsible because I chose to get up every single day and run, you know, 25 miles a week, consistently over time, right? You say, this is what I did freely. This is what I chose to do. On the other hand, if I do something off character, like say I make a bad joke or something that's a fact,

and I usually don't do that. I'm like, oh, it's almost like it feels like it's not part of you. That's why the compatibilist view, I think, is so strong because you feel like the decisions that are are the most free decisions that you make. That's true. But, you know, if I'm a curmudgeon, just to use your example, and I decide that I want to be a nicer person. And so I put into practice, you know, kindness and all these things to try to work on this, this character flaw that I see in myself. Even the desire to be a good person seems to come out of nowhere. nowhere. Like there are curmudgens who have that sensation of like, wow, this desire bubbles up that I want to try to be better. And there are those that don't. Or like the alcoholic, there's the alcoholic

that has the desire to, you know, not be an alcoholic and the ability to actually put that into practice, whereas the alcoholic standing next to them, you know, can't muster that will, even though maybe the desire is there. So I don't control the fact that I'm the sort of person that that has the desire to no longer be an asshole and can go about doing it you know I'm not to like you know I don't know what are your thoughts on that so I guess this is like Schopenhauer's biggest

is sort of the most famous for making this critique where he says you can you can will what you wish but you can't will what you will right so like you say the decision seems to kind of come out of air like it's almost like people want freedom to mean that you can almost like

go back in time and will what you were five minutes ago that caused your will to be right here. But again, I think this is just muddle thinking because I think that's inconceivable. Of course you can't will what you will because it doesn't mean anything. There's no meaning to this. You can't have any, like I can't conceive of any possible universe, even where I make up the laws, that this would be not the case. So one thing I would say is like if you're, if we don't have free will, it has to be conceivable.

There has to be something that we're conceiving of that is the free will that we're lacking. It can't be something inconceivable. You can't, and I especially think you can't, because people say that free will is an illusion, and you can't have illusions about things that your mind can't conceptualize. And I don't think you can conceptualize any other way of being

for any other creature where they can kind of retroactively will, almost like back in time, what their decisions were going to, be i don't even know what that would mean that's so that's my big response is that if it's not conceivable it doesn't you don't have to worry about it existing um Zach anything you want to throw out there I just add I you know I get no related argue my wife a lot uh because she's a she studies parasites that manipulate their host's behavior and so it's this quite you know like they're like

ants that you can be exquisitely manipulated to go to like a particular height and do particular action there's nothing quite like that in humans but there is like you know if you have a uh like well, I'm sure you all are familiar with the famous cases of people who have had like brain tumors that change their behavior and the criminal justice system had to interface with that. But I agree with Corey. I feel like that's kind of a separate, separate issue to me. Yeah, well, let's talk a little bit because we laid down the idea of consciousness. So I know you talked about it a little bit, Corey, but you know, do you want to talk a little bit more about the role that consciousness plays in this discussion? And, you know, importantly, is consciousness essential for you in order to maintain your compatibilism?

Could there be, I mean, we could talk about philosophical zombies or, you know, artificial intelligence that don't have consciousness but have high degrees of intelligence and reactivity to their environment. So what role does consciousness play in all of this for you in your position? Yeah, I mean, I am of the opinion. This is obviously controversial that consciousness is absolutely crucial to have free will. I don't think if, so a philosophical zombie for the people don't know is something that behaves exactly like a human, but doesn't have consciousness, right? So it's just as smart. It can understand language. It can seem to make decisions.

I think that they would not I think they're inconceivable as well because I think consciousness plays a role in the ability to have to understand have a real understanding of language and real understanding of the world but all you have to do is say

look imagine there was a world where we were all pee zombies we never had consciousness I don't believe in that world this debate ever would have come up I don't think any because there would be no tension nobody would think are we really not free like i'll make the joke on twitter like i'll believe computers have consciousness when they start arguing among themselves if they have free will right like two computers connected to a network no humans interfit nobody wrote a program to argue about

free will they just start having the debate right and then you'll be like whoa what's going on here you know that means there is so it's like i think consciousness being wrapped to our identities is what drives this debate and i think that means consciousness has to have a real effect on the world, again, to have free will. It is possible that we could discover that consciousness is what philosophers call epiphenomenal, meaning it's like a byproduct, like heat is a byproduct of an engine. So your brain is making all the decisions. And consciousness just for whatever reason, due to the complexity or the feedback loops,

like people like Dan and Danet say, consciousness just sort of arises. But it doesn't do anything. Like the heat in the engine doesn't help the car drive, right? the consciousness of your brain could just be this sort of byproduct of your brain that doesn't have any effect on the world. If that's the case, I would say we genuinely don't have freedom.

If it's the case that the consciousness is like we experience it, where it's sort of the one who understands what's going on and is like the director, like the CEO of your brain, who can say, whoa, whoa, wait a second, brain, I know you want to eat right now, but I'm trying to lose weight

to look better in the summer. Right? Your brain is made, your consciousness is the one making those decisions. Your body's not doing. Your brain's not doing it. I mean, your brain is somehow creating the consciousness, but the consciousness is the one who's supposed to understand all the goals, aspirations, and drive your life. That's the purpose of consciousness, I think, evolutionarily. If that's true, then we do have free will. I see. So as a follow-up, you know, animals, I would argue, are conscious. You know, think of the most intelligent animals, dolphins, elephants, even dogs to some extent. We usually jot up their decisions and behavior to instincts. But in your sort of argumentation, do animals have free will? And if not, what fundamentally makes them different from human beings? Because consciousness can't be the differentiating factor there. Sure.

I mean, I think, again, freedom is a spectrum and consciousness is a spectrum. Like, do you have free will when you haven't slept for 48 hours? I would say you have less of it, a lot less. And you also have a lot less consciousness. You know how you're like a little slipping in and out of consciousness? You're also slipping in and out of freedom. Because if a decision comes up, you won't understand what's going on because your consciousness is groggy. And you won't really be able to deliberate around the world.

And you have to act a little more on instinct. You have to rely on your past, like instincts to kind of have your body do what it's doing. I think animals are a lot like that. Now, like, does a lizard have consciousness? I would say probably like a tiny, faint bit, right? Because they have the same sort of structure as our brains. If our brains are creating consciousness, it falls to reason their brains are creating like a little bit of consciousness. Do they deliberate about the world and come to decisions?

I don't think so. Does a chimpanzee? Probably a little bit, right? Does a dolphin? Probably a little bit. I think elephants, you can see them deliberating sometimes and making decisions. And I think those decisions are conscious, so I think they have freedom. I think they have less freedom than us.

And I think there could be more advanced brains than ours that have more freedom. And I think some humans have more freedom than others, right? And they have more consciousness than others. It's hard to sort of get what that means. But I think if you think about yourself, yeah, you can have more consciousness at sometimes, less at other times. You can make freer choices sometimes and less at other times. So I don't think there's anything contradictory about having a little bit of consciousness or a little bit of free will. I think it's fine.

with children it could be argued that they have just as much consciousness right as an adult because I mean like the the actual awareness is just as crisp and clear as an adult's awareness would be so is there a difference there or am I missing something important with with I know you say there's a spectrum and I more or less accept that but the the consciousness of an animal versus an adult human we get there's there's a difference there there doesn't seem to be a difference in consciousness per se between a kid and an adult, but there seems to be a difference there regarding their ability to maybe deliberate or exercise their freedom. What would say you on that? Well, is there a difference? It's hard to say. When you say a kid, you're probably thinking

with five-year-old. What about a three-month-old? I would say, yeah. I would think, for one, you don't remember it. Memory, of course, is a weird thing that binds our identity together, but that's kind of like, you know, like someone with amnesia. Do you say that they're a different person? I don't know. Identity over time. is such a tricky problem. But I would say, yeah, maybe kids have less consciousness. The way we don't hold them to moral responsibility as much is because they don't have an understanding of the world.

Like in the world we actually live in, you have to understand things. And you have to be kind of mature before you can say, oh, this person's really making decisions rather than like everybody knows kids are more impulsive, they're more immature. So we let them off because of that. Are they less conscious? I would say probably, actually. It's hard to like go back in your own mind and think, okay, like I can think, oh, yesterday day I wasn't very conscious because I was kind of sleepy right before I went to bed. But if I go back

and think about myself as a five-year-old, I was like, was I more conscious or less? Maybe I was far less conscious. And you just sort of don't have a way to know that. And again, science is so like can't touch the field of consciousness so much that we can't like measure it. So we have no weight of like proving any of these things, I guess, easily. Fair. Yeah. Zach, anything you want to add to this? I had a couple thoughts as you're going. To be honest, I sort of intuitively accept everything you're saying, but I have some like quibbles, I guess I would say, which is one, it feels like it leads to some weirdness and maybe that's okay, but like, you're saying earlier you would have trouble accepting the idea that a thermostat is conscious, but to me that would just be

on the spectrum somewhere, like if we're going to use this sort of definition of, that has to do with like paying attention and understanding. The other thing that was, Hived in my head that was moving, you were talking about the idea that, like, if you haven't slept for 48 hours, you're less conscious. So, like, by this sort of way of thinking, and, again, maybe this is okay, you'd have to say, like, if tomorrow I took Adderall and studied some number theory, that I would, like, gain a couple steps in the Tower of Consciousness, which I have no reason to say that's not true, but I think it's a fairly counter-attuitive way, but that seems to me more like something like decision-making ability. And then the other thought I had was, you said something about, like, you would accept a computer's having free will when it could write its own program to argue about free will that no one else it designed. So I guess I'd love to hear your thoughts in general whether you think a computer could ever have free will. Because my instant reaction to that is to think, like, well, I mean, humans, we have hardware and programs too, it seems. I mean, I understand you object to, like, being two reductions about that.

But that's why you couldn't say, we have programs just written by evolution, as do some computers, of course. So I know that's a lot, but can I get your reaction? Yeah, I guess I'll talk about the computer one is probably the most interesting one, because it is funny. So when you say, can computers have free will or can computers have consciousness? If you maybe just change computer to machine, it's like, well, yes, obviously a machine could be conscious, right? Our brains are biological machines. I have no problem with saying a brain is a biological machine. But what the computer science people want, which is really funny,

it's like the most special unique feature of our mind is the ability to consciously understand the world and make directives about it. And the computer people, a lot of them like think this is going to come along for free. They're just going to build computers and then one day they've got it, right? It's like thinking, say like the most special part of our bodies is like the ability of human beings. beings, one of the remarkable things, so that we can run long distances because we can sweat. Other animals can't do this. They'll die if they run a marathon, right? If you were to build a machine that were to imitate humans, you wouldn't think you can just

start, like, building that, and that would come along for free. Consciousness is even way more remarkable than that. Like I said, an unconscious human being behaves much differently than a conscious human being. So the computer, right, it's the same machine, same biological brain is someone who's sleepwalking, same computer, much different behavior. Consciousness adds something to our brain. Something, in fact, it adds the vast majority of things that make human beings be able to create civilization. Computers, if they're going to have this very special trait, we have to actually build it, right? Computers can't do graphics processing without a GPU, right? The only reason we can play video games is because we built highly specialized hardware,

in order to emulate, you know, in order to calculate as many triangles per second as possible in these GPUs, right? We're not going to be able to build a biological brain that can make this, or a mechanical brain that can make decisions and have consciousness unless we figure out how the brain is doing it, and then we replicate that exactly in the computer. It's not going to come along for free. That would be my opinion on computers. It's possible to build a computer that's like a, you know, like data on Star Trek. It's possible, but we have to figure out how the brain does it first. We're not going to figure it out from computers. Because one interesting thing about computers, too, is that they're very, very, very bad at what we're good at.

And we're very, very, very bad at what they're good at. So what I mean by that is, like, the smartest person on earth at math, the greatest math genius of all time, cannot multiply as many numbers in their head as the most simple computer. right? They can't do it. The greatest supercomputer on Earth cannot navigate the world as well as a lizard. It can't do it. Maybe it could do it. But it's obvious that the way computers are built and the way our brains are built are two totally cleavages. And if we want to build a computer that's like a human, we have to actually do it. We have to build consciousness. And we have to figure out how. And it looks like it's a pretty hard problem. Neuroscience needs to get a lot more advanced. That's all I would say. I have some slight things with that. I basically agree with what you're saying. I think we'll emulate a brain before we could like try to build some conscious thing from scratch. But that seems to me like, it seems to me like that's just because like the brain happens to be here. Like we have like an example of the right kind of hardware.

But it's why, you know, like it's almost tautological. Like you have to have like some kind of brain before you could build a brain like machine. And then why wouldn't you look at the one that already exists? What you were saying about how like computer can, you know, multiply. better than any human or that sort of thing. There's actually a term for that. It's called Morvex paradox, after Hans Moritz,

who I should say was wrong about a whole lot of stuff. He thought we'd have like perfect AI by the year 2000, I think. But, yeah, the idea, like, you know, a human, you know, a robot, for example, was really bad at folding laundry, which like, you know, my, my seven-year-old can do, well, is technically capable of. And I agree, but it seems to me like,

there's a problem which is that like you know with the example of like navigating the world you're right that probably a lizard is better at it but if you go back 20 years it's clear a lizard is better at it now you've got to think about it for a second and part of that is because we've learned from the brain and there's this nice feedback loop now between like computer science and and and neuroscience the other objection I have and this is to be honest it's kind of an aesthetic objection But I do think it's too reductionist. There is something really beautiful about what what computer scientists do in the sense that computer scientists isn't answering questions about, like, what a particular machine does. They're answering questions about how computation works in this universe.

And so if there is like a fastest possible algorithm for solving some problem, then it's quite plausible to me that evolution is going to try to seek it out. and for the same reason that we would try to seek it out by engineering. So I don't know that you disagree with this, but I think there is a sort of grander role for computer science in that it is answering fundamental questions about the nature of like the speed of computation and the best way to solve recurrent types of problems in reality. I don't actually know that contributes to the discussion, but it's like an aesthetic thing for me. Yeah, actually the one thing I would say about that is that we have to remember why

that computers are, unlike human beings, are tools. And the reason computers are, one reason that computers are so bad about, like, doing the things that we do is because that would not be useful to us. We built them purposely to do the things we're bad at. That's why we built computers. So if we want to build a computer like a human, we have to start building humans. You know what I mean? And the other thing is like to remember is like, our brain is like, you know how like if you

want to play a Nintendo 64 game on a PC? the PC has to be like 10, 50, 100, maybe 1,000 times more powerful than the Nintendo 64. So we might be able to build a computer that can do what a lizard does, but the amount of energy it has to consume will be like 20 million times what the lizard consumes to do the same thing. That means that the architecture is vastly different, right? So I think if you want to have consciousness, we need the architecture that's closer to the brand, right? it's like if you want to have

if you want to do math we got an architecture that's really good for that which are transistors and all this stuff if you want to have consciousness you need a totally different architecture one can sort of emulate the other and I don't think when a computer

will emulate what humans can do it will have consciousness because I think consciousness is what allows you to do it easily right that's what I think I think it's like vastly different architectures much like a like

You know, like I said, a PC, like an X-86 architecture, is really not that different than a Nintendo 64. But to emulate the Nintendo 64, you still need much more power. So it's like the same thing with computers and brains. You have to build a computer like a brain to get a brain. I mean, or maybe there's other ways of doing it too, but obviously in real life we're going to emulate the brain because we have an example, like you said. Yeah, I guess, and I don't want to get bogged down. the specific fundamentally it's like an empirical question that like we we don't know how to answer but there are these hypothetical problems of computer science involving a substance called computronium

which is like what is the most compact way you could do computation like if you you know like like using the most fundamental and fundamental particles and I did see why in principle you couldn't make I mean I agree I think if you're going to design a lizard brain probably the best way to do it is design a lizard brains there's probably all sorts of weird emergent stuff involved in a lizard brain that's really complicated. But it seems to be like an empirical question, though. Like, I don't see why in principle you couldn't, in some very futuristic world, make a brain that, you know, sits in a lizard's head and occupies less space and takes

less power, but gives you the same output. And I'm not talking about like a pea zombie. I mean, it's doing the same sort of operations. There could be some really good, really interesting reason why you can't, but I don't know. what the reason is. And it seems to me to be an empirical question. Yeah, I would agree with that, totally. One more question on consciousness. This is sort of, you know, only somewhat related, and it just sort of occurs to me as everybody's talking here. You know, Zach uses the example of like, you know, taking Adderall to sort of increase your consciousness. And certainly we have

an intuitive sense of like, okay, if consciousness is a spectrum, we can understand ourselves being like sleeping out of it. We can understand maybe how an animal would have like less of the consciousness or whatever. It is sort of hard. And maybe this is, just definitionally true because we're at a certain part in the spectrum you can't see ahead of it but like really what would more consciousness necessarily mean like on my best day when I'm incredibly alert and everything is very vivid. It's hard for me to imagine what a higher level of consciousness is. I guess I could say maybe an alien would have a six, seventh, or eighth sensory organ which would allow for more input and that could increase consciousness. But it's hard

for me to imagine just like as a conscious being what more of that would be. And I don't know if that's even a coherent question, but do you have any thoughts on that whatsoever? Well, first of all, I hate to do it, gentlemen, but we're going to have to say, Hegel, right? He said the history of the world is the history of the consciousness of freedom, right? So think about your own life, though, where, you know, human beings have gotten more conscious over time of certain issues, right? You can talk about class consciousness. Is that a metaphor or is it real? Or is it actually, are you actually more conscious? I would say you are. You're literally more conscious of things, right? And to give like a smaller example, like say, since the pandemic started, I started like doing bird watching, like,

because I couldn't go anywhere. I would look out the window and look at birds. Now when I go on walks, I am far more conscious of the bird sounds around me. I'll hear a bird sound and it'll I'll be much, much more conscious of it. Somebody who is extremely knowledgeable about plants would be more conscious of the trees and the fauna around them, right? So when we learn things, when we increase our knowledge,

we increase our consciousness in various respects. Some people are more conscious of some things, some people are more conscious of other things in the same situation. Now, if you take a person who has gone through the process of learning everything, they would be more conscious of everything, the more you learn the more conscious you are various observations in the world and they would have

more freedom in my opinion too in the hegelian sense where humanity is progressing right theoretically there's a perfect person with a perfect mind who is conscious of everything right you could call it god or whatever but you could say it's just you can imagine a not god you can imagine the perfect brain you know and they know every single fact about the universe and they've finished the project of the ideological consciousness as well because some things

are not fact you can be conscious of social justice right it's not a fact about the world so I would say yes we can increase our unconsciousness and we do all the time through learning in that sense is consciousness synonymous with knowledge I don't

I don't know about that okay all right Yeah, Zach, anything you want to add to that? Yeah, I was going to add, you know, one of the, I had sent a video just because I happened to come across to a friend of mine named Scott Aronson, who's a computer scientist, who's like into the questions about free will. And I actually had an uncanny experience with him once, which was we were talking about comics. And so I sort of sent him a list of the best comic books ever made.

And one was a book by a French author named Juan Sfar called The Rabbi's Cat. I don't know if either of you've read it, but it's one of the sort of like very great comics. And I sent it to it just as like, this is really good literature. And he read it and he's, I remember he was like, I enjoyed it except, and then he started pinpointing all these very, very subtle inaccuracies. And not like Neil de Brass Tyson stuff, like genuine, well, why did the character say this on page four when then later he says this on page 182? And I had this like strange experience of thinking like, you're kind of just operating, like,

I already thought of you this. probably a bit smarter than me. But there's also, there's like, you have a way of, like, detecting patterns that I just, it's not a part of my brain. Maybe with, like, if I spent all day doing math proofs, then, like, that part of my brain would, like, muscle up. But it was weird. But I never had the thought, Scott is more conscious than me.

I thought, Scott, you know, is probably in a conventional sense, more intelligent than me. And may more aware of, like, questions having to do with logic or computation. But I think to most people, what you're describing as consciousness, they would describe as some combination of like intelligence and knowledge and sort of general awareness of one's surroundings, which is like, you know, we can define consciousness that way. But it seems to me like for most of that would be a kind of disappointing sort of paltry sense of consciousness, which I think most people think more about the identity aspect of it. Do you think that's also part of it?

Or like, how does identity play into your idea of a spectrum? spectrum. So I kind of ignore the identity question, but to get back to consciousness. Yeah. Yeah. So this is why I don't want to quit it with knowledge, because I think there's other aspects, like intelligence and knowledge. I don't think a more intelligent person is more conscious per se. But you're talking about reading a novel? Like, I think it becomes more clear. What about someone who has never drank a glass of wine and someone who is like a wine snob who drinks wine every day? And they drink four different glasses of wine. Does. the wine snob experienced things about the wine that the other person did not? I would say absolutely yes, right? They're like, oh, this one had an oaky flavor. This one had a, I'm not a wine snob, so I can't even give it the thing. They're experiencing things literally that they don't, that like the newbie doesn't experience. And I'm sure we all have had changes in taste.

Like I drank a lot of beer. I can tell the difference between beers and other people can't because I literally experience more about their taste. I think when you say people will say you're more aware of it, I think you literally are consciously have experiences that the other person doesn't have when you have more knowledge. So maybe it's sort of like knowledge. Again, the brain creates consciousness. So I don't know how it interplays. But when you know more about a thing and you're more familiar with it, you are more conscious

of what's going on and not just metaphorically, I would say. Right. Your conscious visceral experience changes. It is different. Yeah. Very interesting. What would you say, Corey, is, you know, the, the, strongest argument if you could be as concise as possible about it against your own position.

Do you have any argument that you would? Yeah, so we already talked about like Schopenhauer saying you can't will what you will. And that one I do think is kind of inconceivable. But at the end of the day, what compatibilism doesn't save is that the idea that we could have done otherwise. And it's very hard for people to give that up. Like if you replay the events, it's going to be the same this time and the next time and the next time. And we never would have done otherwise. now I think it's more questionable whether this is inconceivable or not

because again I don't think you can't have things that are inconceivable but like yeah we can't do otherwise than what we do right I think that's again I sort of think it's definitely definitionally true that of course you can't what would it even mean to do things otherwise than that you would have done or that you do based on your nature but I think a lot of people don't want to give up we could have done otherwise and they just won't and so that's that's what makes it very resistant in people's brains yeah didn't use the argument of like somebody throws a brick at you you duck you know you feel as if you there could

have been a playing out of that exact scenario where never could have been but there never could have been because you did see it and you did duck okay let's go ahead and move towards the end here this is absolutely fascinating i love the back and forth as well um but you know my engagement with this debate obviously philosophy of mind as an undergrad but i'm in my 30s now, and mostly it comes through my engagement with Buddhist philosophy and in Buddhism. The common sense idea that there is this abiding self at the core of our experiences is seen as an illusion. There's practices you can implement to see through it viscerally. And as such, the idea that there is a will belonging to that self that can be exercised in any meaningful

way is ultimately rejected as illusory as well. Many high-level Buddhist practitioners who like credibly gained deep insider could claim for themselves, you know, the tradition meaning of genuine enlightenment will routinely argue that once they've reached these levels of practice, they feel viscerally, that sense of a free will that we all sort of feel. They see that drop away. So, like, we talk earlier about, you know, there'll be these determinists who don't believe in free will, but they still feel as if they're acting freely in the world. And at least due to these people's arguments and what they say, they actually can get rid of that feeling altogether. So I'm just like really interested in what your thoughts are on this general trend. I don't

expect you to be an expert in Buddhist philosophy, but I like your thoughts. And more particularly the role that the self, you know, we talked about unified consciousness, for example, I'm just wondering what you think of as the self and what role it plays in this debate. Yeah, I mean, I'm not an expert enough to comment on this, but I do a little bit wonder if the illusion drops away because they come to a compatibilist definition internally. It is possibly you could describe it like that too. But it is funny that, like, Buddhism and some traditional philosophers like Hume come to it internally through perception and say it's an illusion, like the self is an illusion.

And if the self is an illusion completely, which I think I am, from what I understand is controversial in Buddhism. Some say this way, some say that way, different sex, of course. But if it's totally an illusion, then I would say, yes, if there is no self, you cannot have free will. so if you've come to that conclusion through an internal judgment of like examining your own consciousness of course the language becomes very funny examining your own consciousnesses that you don't exist but I think it's coherent or if it's like you say there's no self because you're examining matter

like the way scientists do it and they say look there's no room for the self there's only sort of a phenomenon like a lot of philosophers will say maybe there's a self but it only exists for like a plank second or like maybe a two seconds or something thing and then it zaps away and then there's a next a new self right and maybe they have some kind of freedom but it's kind of a weird that's losing a lot too if we say i'm not the person i was 10 seconds ago in what sense of my freedom these are other people making decisions so i think if you lose the self entirely either through a buddhist perspective or through a physical perspective yeah i would say freedom pretty much has to go so what if you argue that there that there is a

self what exactly is that to you is it synonymous with consciousness is it something else we talked about you know cutting the corpus colossum could give rise to two separate consciousnesses or a self that is conflicted against itself the parliament idea so what is your idea of a self in your in your conception of this yeah well i have a hard time understanding what it means like i think everybody has a hard time understanding what it means over time but there is a fundamental unity to your to your perception right right something is very very unified um about there is one consciousness and it's unified in some sense right it's just not there are distinct beings in the world that have distinct conscious fields or whatever you want to call them and that's yourself and that is making decisions so i think that's where you

save it and you know yeah you have you have to be able to have some concept of that yeah i guess in In Buddhism, it would, the idea is like the consciousness is always there, right? The consciousness remains, but by watching the contents of consciousness arise and fall away, you realize that what you take to be a static, sustainable self, you know, through time or even in a moment, is actually just, you know, content is one among many contents within consciousness. So that once the self is seen through, there's like, you know, the subject, object, dualism could collapse. And so people would experience their consciousness without having a center, literally as if what is happening across the street is just as immediate as what's happening right now. But again, it gets very difficult to talk about even within the tradition.

But it's certainly very interesting and has implications for this debate. Zach, I was wondering, coming from your perspective, if you have any thoughts whatsoever on this idea of the self and what role it plays. I really just don't have a problem with the idea that there's no selves. It just, I don't see why we need this presumption that there's, there really is a unity. I know it gets, again, very hard to talk about because, you know, if you, if you say, I don't see any unity, you're invoking an eye that's detecting the non-unity. But like, I thought I tell kind of a funny story that might be a good way to sum this up, which is there's, as you know, a philosophy called stoicism, which has a lot of similarity to my mind with Buddhism. And I like it quite a bit, and Stoicism in the real sense of it, not, you know, there's this stereotype that it means something like being Spock, but it actually is more to do with like the idea of sort of like, you know, assessing your position in the universe than like what nature is doing in your part and that sort of thing. And I'm like, and accepting is, is the really big thing. And I remember I, I, I, I'm just, I love Marcus Aurelius's meditations, especially chapter two. And I remember though, I, I, I really liked it. I got my. my wife to read it and she's not usually into this stuff and she said to me you know like it was good but

you're already just like this like in other words it's like kind of bullshit for you to say well you just accept stuff because you're just like that temperamentally you didn't come to it like by philosophy you're just kind of an accepting personality which like kind of ruined stoicism for me because I was like you know this guy's got it right but I was like oh wait no I just like by the like random shit of genetics and environment I came to have the right personality to decide this was the true philosophy And I wonder if you don't get the same thing with Buddhist, like maybe a person becomes a Buddhist monk, not because they accepted all this stuff, but because like, through, so to speak, a complete lack of free will, it was already in them to like this kind of stuff. But it was very natural to step into it. Yeah.

So I don't know that his implications for compatibilism or not, but I thought it was kind of funny. It was like, like completely sapped my view that I had the ability to make peace with nature when, in fact, like, nature made peace with me, so to speak. Yeah, that's actually really funny. because I had that exact same experience about stoicism. Really? I read it and I'm like, this is great. And then I remember, I remember thinking back, nobody told me, but I remember thinking back, I was already like this when I was like six years old, like nothing bothered me.

I remember one time when I was, no, here's the memory. It was when Diablo 2 came out. And my brother was like, how could you sit there and be so calm? Well, you know it's in the mail. And I was like, because it's in the mail. Exactly. We can't get it any faster. It didn't bother me at all.

I didn't get it all like that anticipation. And I remember thinking back to that time, I'm like, I never read Stoicism. I was already like that. I'm really, yeah, I just, that's really funny that you say that. That is funny. And I'm now envious of both of you.

Yeah, that's fascinating. All right, so let's go ahead where we're, you know, well over an hour here. I've loved this conversation. Of course, we could continue talking indefinitely about all of these topics. And this is a question I like to end because, you know, we are a left-wing political show primarily. So for those on the political left, interested in, you know, political, economic, social

transformation, what relevance does or can this debate have for them, if any at all? I mean, I think not much because a lot of these problems are dealt with outside of the metaphysical problem per se. So like left us, of course, we'll talk about the blameworthiness of like individuals and then the social impact on their decisions. Like if there's high crime in an area, you can eat. easily recognize that it's caused not by their conscious decisions only but also by the social impacts on them right people talk about that so if there's a spectrum of free will i mean this is

what we we already kind of recognize is true especially leftists right when people maybe want to only like blame them more right exactly but if there's no free will at all then you take that to the extreme there's no moral blame at all maybe that's the if there is a left white right divide on this the sword, the more leftist, like we were saying in prison, you would get rid of punishment and you would only, the prisons only function, if it continued to exist at all, would be to benefit the social organ, right? Because there's no blameworthiness. Yeah. So questions of consciousness and freedom, whether it be existing at all, whether it exists on a spectrum or whether it's absolute, certainly impacts society and how we deal with moral blame of individuals.

versus systems, I guess. Yeah, that's really interesting, and I think that's absolutely true. Like, the debate does sort of, you know, sort of already implicitly play out between right and left when we were talking about, as you said, the question of crime, a left person is more likely to analyze the structures and the underlying society and the rate of poverty and why that disproportionately gives rise to crime among this demographic, whereas, you know, a centrist or a reactionary would be like it's something these individuals are morally responsible. or, you know, the problem lies within the character of these people, et cetera. So that bait already does play out, and I think you're, you hit the nail in the head with that. Zach, do you have anything to say about the intersection of this debate in politics broadly? Yeah, I don't think I have any substantial objection. It seems to me like, you know, if I swing a hammer at a nail, I don't have to know Schrodinger's equations, right?

And it's kind of the same, like, I like, I come to a position of thinking, you know, just this should be. be rehabilitative and not punitive from like reading reading stats about about crime not not not from a consideration of free will and maybe that's like my deficiency but it seems to me like like with the hammer you don't need to know like that it's made of actually I guess I don't know what a hammer is made of probably steel I don't know I don't need to know and it still works just fine so so I don't know that there's any implications like just as I don't think there's a quantum mechanical aspect to like me building a dog house

I don't think that free will has a lot of implications for that sort of thing Yeah, fair enough Any last words, anything you want to say before we throw out some recommendations and plugs? Actually I did I did think of one thing right now that I thought was kind of interesting that is left out

I'll just leave it as an open question But you know how I said like the wine drinker is more conscious of the wine Because they're experienced What's interesting also is that when we learn practical skills. I thought of it because of the hammer, actually. You are less conscious. So somebody who doesn't know how to use a hammer has to use their consciousness to do the hammer, and someone who's good at hammering is less conscious of hammering. So when action occurs,

you actually end up delegating it back to the subconscious. So there's also other, it's a very complex issue there. But that is like something we didn't talk about is that you can become less conscious of things that you're good at. That's really interesting. Absolutely. Well, yeah, we'll leave that open. I would love, you know, anytime either of you want to back on and tackle another topic or flesh out more of this stuff, you're obviously more than welcome. Before I let you go, can you let listeners know where they can find you and your work online? And if people are interested to dig deeper in this debate, maybe a recommendation or two for them to follow up with. Yeah, I mean, I'm just on existential comics. Everybody already

knows about that, you know. As far as recommendations, yeah, I like, I like Gailen Strausson talking about it, who believes it's inconceivable completely. he's probably my favorite philosopher to discuss free will. Zach? You can find me at SMBC-comiccom. And I'm sure Corey has a little better recommendations on what you should look for. But I was just as a sort of like source of amusement, my friend Scott, the computer signed to Scott Aronson wrote a like 90-page paperback

about free will arguing for a position he doesn't believe, which is that there is one. one possible other angle on free will that is usually rejected by everyone, from quantum mechanics to philosophy, everybody, which is that present events can change the past. And he says there's no like definitive proof that that's not possible so you could argue for it. I'm actually, and I'm blanking on the the name of the paper, but have you typed in Scott Aronson, free will. It's, it's to me a very funny paper. I don't buy it and neither does he, but it might be a take you haven't seen before. Totally. Yeah. And even reading something.

you disagree with can often open up new thoughts or avenues for you to go to out and explore. So, yeah, thank you both very much for coming on the show. Love the conversation. Let's do it again sometime. All right, cool. Pleasure. Thank you.