Reject Free Will, Become Who You Are | Brian Leiter on Nietzsche

Summary

Highlights

• Nietzsche’s view suggests rejecting free will can be liberating, allowing individuals to embrace their true nature. 🌿
• Brian Leiter discusses Nietzsche's critical stance on free will and its implications for morality. 🗣️
• The conversation reveals how beliefs in free will might be socially constructed to justify certain behaviors. 🔍
• Empirical studies on heritability are presented to challenge notions of free agency. 📊
• The dialogue uncovers the potential for self-discovery in understanding one’s inherent nature and limitations. 🚀

Key Takeaways

• Nietzsche challenges the concept of free will, asserting it’s an illusion imposed by societal constructs. 🔍
• Believing in free will can confine us, whereas accepting our fated nature encourages authenticity. 🌟
• Nietzsche's argument is rooted in the idea that unconscious drives predominantly govern behavior. 🧠
• Free will is interwoven with moral responsibility, impacting how we justify blame or praise. ⚖️
• Accepting Nietzsche's fatalism can change our perceptions of human behavior and morality. 🔄

Overview

Chapters

• 00:00 - 03:00: Nietzsche's Autobiography and Free Will Nietzsche's autobiography features chapter titles that may seem boastful, such as 'why I am so clever' and 'why I write such good books'. However, Nietzsche attributes his success to luck rather than personal freedom or moral responsibility. He denies the concept of free will, suggesting that belief in it is more about the comforting feeling of autonomy and power it provides rather than its factual basis. Nietzsche contrasts human beings with God, who he describes as the only truly self-caused being, emphasizing the supernatural nature of a truly free entity.
• 03:00 - 06:00: The Illusion of Free Will The chapter titled "The Illusion of Free Will" explores the concept of free will and its impact on perception and behavior. It begins with a metaphor involving a lamb, which symbolizes innocence and non-harm, contrasting with the idea of predation. The narrator reflects on how belief in free will, initially thought to enhance personal agency, might actually impose limitations. This realization stems from an interview, leading to introspection on how the absence of belief in free will affects one's view on choice and agency, challenging the notion of autonomy.
• 06:00 - 09:00: Nietzsche's Alternate Viewpoint This chapter explores Nietzsche's perspective on free will and individuality. Instead of seeing life as out of one's control and thus passive or weak, Nietzsche posits that relinquishing the illusion of free will can actually be liberating. By abandoning the notion that one can change core aspects of their personality, individuals can stop striving to be what they are not and embrace their true selves. This idea is exemplified through historical figures like Caesar and Alexander, who thrived by embodying their authentic selves.
• 09:00 - 12:00: Arguments Against Free Will The chapter challenges the concept of free will by exploring the notion that individuals are destined for certain paths, rather than choosing them. It highlights how belief in one's inevitable greatness can lead to impactful living. The narrative includes a personal reflection on embracing introversion and finding empowerment in quiet, solitary activities like reading. The chapter concludes with the introduction of Professor Brian as a guest, who is likely to delve deeper into the discussion on agency and potential.
• 12:00 - 15:00: Determination and Personality Traits The chapter features a discussion about Nietzschean philosophy, focusing particularly on Nietzsche's arguments against free will. It involves a scholarly discussion with a leading expert in Nietzsche Studies, exploring how rejecting free will does not render individuals powerless, but rather, frames them as capable agents of their own fate. The expert highlights their significant work on Nietzsche's morality, emphasizing the unexpected importance of free will in Nietzsche's thought.
• 15:00 - 18:00: The Balance Between Free Will and Determinism This chapter discusses the emphasis on the treatment of free will, a central theme in Nietzsche's philosophy. It explores how Nietzsche connects this topic to his larger project of revaluating values and critiquing Judeo-Christian morality. Nietzsche views the belief in freedom as a metaphysical foundation of traditional values, and by questioning it, he aims to challenge and overturn these deeply rooted moral principles.
• 18:00 - 21:00: Implications of Rejecting Free Will The chapter 'Implications of Rejecting Free Will' discusses the moral and philosophical consequences of dismissing the concept of free will. It explores how rejecting free will challenges traditional notions of moral responsibility, including the justification of blame, punishment, and moral accountability for immoral behavior. The chapter also delves into a sophisticated understanding of the human mind and agency, arguing for a nuanced view of how human actions are determined by factors beyond individual control.
• 21:00 - 24:00: Practical Approach to Nietzsche's Philosophy The chapter delves into Nietzsche's philosophy, emphasizing his revisionary view on human behavior and belief. Nietzsche challenges the notion of free will and moral responsibility, arguing that human actions are primarily driven by unconscious drives rather than conscious decision-making. This view contrasts with common beliefs about human autonomy and moral accountability.
• 24:00 - 27:00: Conclusion and Further Exploration The chapter 'Conclusion and Further Exploration' delves into the theme of self-discovery and the limits of self-awareness. It discusses the concept that individuals may not fully know themselves better than others can know them, as much of our mental life remains unconscious. The discussion connects to historical psychological insights, highlighting similarities with Freudian concepts. The chapter emphasizes a shift in understanding the nature of being human, challenging traditional notions of free will and self-perception.

Reject Free Will, Become Who You Are | Brian Leiter on Nietzsche Transcription

• 00:00 - 00:30 nich's autobiography has chapter titles like why I am so clever why I write such good books and you think he's out of his mind no because the answer he gives is it was just luck he does not believe that human beings are free or morally responsible in their choices why I believe in Free Will it's my phenomenal knowledge I feel like I'm willing it's a better feeling to feel that we're acting freely it produces a feeling of power there's only one being who self-caused God and he is Supernatural for precisely that reason the Lambs say you Birds of
• 00:30 - 01:00 Prey right you are evil eating little lambs you should be good like us Lambs who don't hurt anyone how does he want us to live can we even live as if we don't have free will I've always thought that believing in Free Will made me more agential but this interview made me realize how belief in Free Will can actually limit my agency here's the basic idea I came into this interview probably like most of us thinking that living without Free Will meant that that my choices aren't
• 01:00 - 01:30 my own and that my life is fundamentally out of my control which seems like a pretty passive and weak way to live but n says no giving up free will can be freeing because the sooner you give up the idea that you can choose that you can change core aspects of your personality the sooner you'll stop trying to be something you aren't and become who you are think about the great conquerors people like Caesar and Alexander they believe believed they
• 01:30 - 02:00 were faded to wield power not that they chose to and that belief in their own destiny my greatness is inevitable allowed them to live entually and forcefully in my own life coming to terms with my introversion I just don't really like social events empowered me to basically live like a Hermit and read books all day that's the agency that n wants to teach you the agency to realize your unique potential that you are born with my guest today is Professor Brian
• 02:00 - 02:30 ligher one of the world's leading nche Scholars and we are going to discuss n's arguments against Free Will and why rejecting it doesn't turn you into a powerless Leaf in the wind but a powerful agent of Fate so Professor you've written two seminal works on nich's morality and what was shocking to me is your disproportionate focus on n's treatment of free will because that's not something one really thinks about when they first think of n
• 02:30 - 03:00 why did you want to emphasize n's treatment here on the Free Will why is it important for you why is it important to n and why should the rest of us care okay so I actually think it is pretty Central in n and he takes it up in many different places and many different ways and it's Central because it's closely connected to his major project of revaluation of value and attack on judeo-christian morality um he takes to be one of the sort of metaphysical grounds of judeo-christian morality is a belief in Freedom of the
• 03:00 - 03:30 will right such that if someone acts in an immoral way it is Justified to blame them for it you can hold people moral responsible punishment is Justified for immoral behavior and and so on so I think he's very interested in uh in this question and his rejection of Free Will is closely connected to his un unusual and very sophisticated picture of how the mind really works and how what human agency uh is is really like so in in
• 03:30 - 04:00 those regards I think it's quite Central um uh to what he's doing now why should we care his view on these questions is quite revisionary I think of what ordinary belief is he does not believe that human beings are free or morally responsible in their choices he believes that our conscious life is fairly superficial that we do what we do largely because of unconscious drives that are operating in our psyche we're
• 04:00 - 04:30 largely unaware of right he doesn't think that I know more about myself than you know more than you can know about me I discover who I am partly by observing my behavior just as I learn about you by observing yours right because the bulk of our mental life is unconscious right so there's a whole picture n has that anticipates Freud in various ways that's connected to his critique of Free Will and leads to a very different understanding of what it is to be to to be a human being right so what I'm
• 04:30 - 05:00 hearing is number one it is actually quite Central to n's philosophy as a whole number two it should matter to us because the reasons he gives for us not having free will is actually quite interesting and unique in terms of a contemporary View and of course number three it's it's naturally intuitive for us to care whether we have free will or not right moral responsibility flow from that so we're going to spend this entire interview just unpacking that concept we're going to split into three parts first we're going to talk about just his
• 05:00 - 05:30 position on Free Will is um number two we're going to understand what arguments and objections that that one may have for n's position and number three and this is the most exciting part we're going to talk about how n wants us to live if we do agree that we are unfree uh in the way that he described so you already gave a rough overview of n's understanding of the Free Will or lack thereof anything to add for a provisional first pass so I think it's maybe important just to get um some
• 05:30 - 06:00 terminology uh uh introduced I mean there are two ways in uh in sort of modern philosophy that people have thought we might have free will um one view is the compati blist family of views that says the freedom of the will is compatible with the causal determination of the will and you're free as long as you do what you want that's the simplest version of it even if your wants or desires are determined
• 06:00 - 06:30 by something else that doesn't matter so if it's if the world is just Newtonian that's not a problem for these theorists that's what correct if Newtonian mechanics mechanical determinism were true right that would not be a problem for this this view of Free Will so free will is not a matter of the will being undetermined it's a matter of the will determining our actions in the right kind of way and then the whole question is what's the right kind of way um there's another uh equally important tradition
• 06:30 - 07:00 the The incompatibles View which says Free Will is incompatible with determinism therefore the will cannot be free unless it is causally undetermined so it stands outside the causal order of the Newtonian world for example um Kant held that kind of view many contemporary philosophers hold that kind of view n rejects both kind ways of conceiving of Free Will um everyone pretty much agrees and recognizes he rejects the incompass aist conception because that presupposes
• 07:00 - 07:30 the idea that somehow human beings could stand outside the natural order right and n as a broadly speaking naturalistic philosopher rejects that right we are bodies we are fundamentally embodied we do not exist outside of the natural realm as he says for incompatibilism to be true the will would have to be a cause of itself right we'd have to be self-caused but that makes no sense there's only one being who self-caused
• 07:30 - 08:00 God and he is Supernatural for precisely that reason okay um but I think it's equally important that n does not accept any of the compatibl views of free will either right so now there there's a lot of different compatible views we can consider I'm going to just mention two main ones um one view is the view that derives from the Scottish philosopher David Hume and receives a famous articulation in modern contemporary 20th
• 08:00 - 08:30 century Philosophy by Harry Frankfurt right and on this view you act freely all right as long as you act on the desires that you want to act on so in in frankfurt's terminology that you have a second order desire that a particular first order desire be effective right so I'm not free if I drink a glass of beer when I have a second order desire that I shouldn't drink beer that's an unfree act but if I
• 08:30 - 09:00 have a second order desire to drink the beer right then if I drink it I've I've acted freely and that's all there is to it and then Frank for you know then people point out well what if your second order desire is determined by something you have no control over that doesn't look so good right and so then later Frankfurt says well as long as you identify with the desire that you actually act on now part of n's problem with this picture part of it is that he
• 09:00 - 09:30 thinks whatever first or second order desires you have are already determined by things that you have no control over so can't be responsible for but the other problem he thinks is that we don't actually know what desire or drive we're acting on in any particular case we are largely ignorant of that right we tell ourselves stories about it but we don't really know so we don't we can't identify with the desire or the drive that's causing us to act because we don't know what
• 09:30 - 10:00 that drive is so Frankfurt style compatible views are going to be a non-starter for N More recently a lot of preface this by saying you know analytic philosophers are very conservative I I don't mean in the political you know Republican Democrat they're conservative in the sense that they like to preserve ordinary ideas ordinary practices nich is not that way Marx is not that way a lot of philosophers in the European Traditions
• 10:00 - 10:30 are not that way but analytic philosophers they see people we blame people we hold them responsible we think they're free so they want to try to find a way to make sense of it and the the popular recent effort version of compatibilism is you know I I call it in the book reasons responsive compatible it says as long as the agent is responsive to reasons right for doing something or not doing it then they can be responsible and blameworthy for the
• 10:30 - 11:00 for the choices they make the problem is is that for nche on this kind of view is is it it it appeals entirely to conscious reasoning and n's View and now this goes to his broader picture of the Mind Nature's view is that conscious reasoning is largely epiphenomenal it's largely an illusion right we may spend a lot of time doing it but it's not actually what explains or accounts for our our action that's the over VI picture of what he of why he
• 11:00 - 11:30 rejects the two main ways of conceptualizing Free Will that's fascinating and right now what we're going to do now that we have an understanding of the view is to go to the second part to talk about the the arguments uh and the objections for this view but I wanted to give you a quote from your book that highlighted why I found nich's attack on Free Will so unique and interesting and I quote to you the general threat to freedom of the will is supposed to come from determinism however in majority God is dead and classical physical determinism
• 11:30 - 12:00 is often claimed to be false due to quantum physics but even without classical determinism Free Will can still be threatened if what we do is causally determined by the environment by our physiology by our unconscious psyche or some combination of these forces nich's kind of determinism is certainly neither the physical nor theological kind but is one that appeals centrally to the role that physiology and unconscious drives play in determining action this will be nich's
• 12:00 - 12:30 fatalism what I found so unique and interesting is that nich's fatalism does not require a metaphysical theory in some form it doesn't require the Newtonian determinism nor does it require the other popular strand of determinism the the theological determinism whether that's the Fate right fate in in Greek mythology whether that's God's uh omniscience in Christian theology instead it's through physiology and our conscious that uh the Free Will is
• 12:30 - 13:00 threatened that's why it's so interesting so now let's go to the arguments for such a view the first argument I don't think it's a direct argument but I think it's a very rhetorically interesting and compelling one which is that we have a lot of incentives to invent freedom to invent Free Will so tell us give us an example of how Free Will can be invented and why we would do so um n thinks Free Will is attractive because it allows us to justify punishing people and he thinks
• 13:00 - 13:30 that for various reasons people have an incentive an Impulse a desire to be able to punish others right um now NCH of course thinks people have very powerful cruel instincts but with punishment right we want to feel it's Justified I mean I could just be cruel to you that's not punishment punishing is you did something wrong and now I'm justified in being cruel to you um but that only works if in fact we we have free will right in the first day say the genealogy nichas gives us the famous parable of
• 13:30 - 14:00 the birds of prey and the lamb to sort of make fun of this right where Birds of Prey by Nature they eat little lambs and the Lambs say you Birds of Prey right you are evil eating little lambs you should be good like us Lambs who don't hurt anyone right and then the birds of Praise say we have nothing against little lambs there's nothing tastier than a little lamb right but the point of it all of course is Birds of Prey don't have free will right and the idea that you'd be justified and punishing the bird of prey for eating little lambs
• 14:00 - 14:30 is kind of crazy right because this is just what birds of prey do they don't sit around and say would it be right or wrong to eat the eat the little lambs or the the rodents or whatever that's just what they do by Nature um we invent free will we justify imposing punishments on people for the so-called choices that they have made that is a something he emphasizes quite a lot right that it was attractive precise because it allowed
• 14:30 - 15:00 some people to say aha now we can justifiably punish punish you um it's not the only argument the other one that he uh refers to is he thinks he thinks that there's uh there's something about the structure of our grammar that leads us to believe in Free Will right and what he has in mind is that at least in the Indo Germanic languages this is not true actually in in some non-indo Germanic languages interestingly but in indog geric languages you can't have a verb verb and an object in the active
• 15:00 - 15:30 form without a subject okay so you know um hit hit the ball if it's not in the imperative form I'm commanding you to do it hit the ball is an incomplete sentence it has to be you hit the ball I hit the ball he hit the ball and this is just a grammatical fact but n thinks the grammatical fact makes seduces us into thinking something has to correspond to the eye to the he right like the will the will that chooses to hit the ball
• 15:30 - 16:00 right so he thinks grammar kind of unconsciously makes thought that there's a will that chooses to perform an action um you know seduces us into thinking it's kind of obvious right that's the other main line of argument I want to elaborate on these two arguments you give especially on the first one the argument you gave was that if I claim that someone did something out of free will they become uh uh morally responsible and therefore guilty of
• 16:00 - 16:30 something right and therefore I can with Justice punish them I think there's a much more general form of this which is that by claiming something is done out of free will an agent becomes morally responsible so I think in many instances in my life people have the opposite incentive to point to themselves and exaggerate their own agency so I've been researching the intellectual history of the word Innovation and what I found in the last you know 300 years in modernity was that people started using innovation in a radical way in ex Neo way I mean in
• 16:30 - 17:00 in the Arts they considered people untutored Geniuses right people who didn't need any traditional learning at all to create their own thing uh in Technology Innovation these days people say we go zero to one of course none of these tech companies go zero to one right most of the times they're building on their predecessors and in Academia perhaps especially in French Academia um they claim that they're making these radical epistemic breaks but these theories are are are barely distinguishable and so the question is why would want to claim such great uh
• 17:00 - 17:30 such such ridiculous notion of inovation and the answer is if you exaggerate your own agency you give more credit to yourself so what I wanted to say is I wanted to highlight that there's another side of this I I think that's true and I N does observe right that um sometimes people want to deny Free Will in order to exonerate themselves I'm not responsible for it Society made me do it but the flip side of that is they want to exaggerate the capacity for agents because they want praise and credit
• 17:30 - 18:00 right based on this is what I this is what I've done and and you gave some nice nice examples of that you know n's very strange autobiography e homo is funny in this regard but consistent with his General views which is uh the autobiography has chapter titles like why I am so clever why I write such good books and you think he's out of his mind no because the answer he gives to the question why he is so clever is it was just luck it was a stroke of fate right by Nature he was the kind of person who
• 18:00 - 18:30 instinctively chose the right conditions under which he could flourish in other words he doesn't use Free Will in the way you're describing to try to give himself extra credit whereas the typical autobiography does that right exactly so that's the first argument and again that's not going to convince anyone that's just to make us suspicious of free will yeah let's go to what I take to be the central argument which is that when most people think this is my position for example why I believe in free will it's my phenomenology well I
• 18:30 - 19:00 feel like I'm willing certain actions I'm not willing other actions n attempts to deconstruct this phenomenology this experience of willing so tell us that argument so I I agree with you that many people take first person phenomenology they feel like they're exercising free will one thing empirical psychology has shown in recent years is that that bit of introspective experience is very unreliable so for example you're familiar with Ouija boards right um people who play with Ouija boards think
• 19:00 - 19:30 uh are mistaken about what their what role their choices are playing in the movement of of it they are in fact moving it but they don't realize it and conversely there's lots of cases where we think we're exercising free will when we're exercising Choice when in fact we're we're not right that's just about contemporary empirical psychology um n in general is quite skeptical of introspection which was a dominant form of psychology in the 19th century here
• 19:30 - 20:00 he was preent nobody takes introspective psychology seriously anymore it is very very unreliable he tries to offer an alternative analysis of what's going on when we experience Free Will so I raise my arm right and n's question as well um I freely raised my arm and then n says okay but your arm is part of you as well right why do you identify with the will
• 20:00 - 20:30 that chose to raise the arm rather than the arm right why why isn't my experience my arm got raised right and what n says is because it gives a feeling of power to feel like the thought that preceded the action controlled the action and this is again a kind of best explanation argument you can explain why we'd be inclined to introspect as though we act freely because it's a better feeling to feel that we're freely it produces a feeling
• 20:30 - 21:00 of of power again that by itself doesn't show that the phenomenology is wrong but his General picture of the Mind gives us other reasons to think it's wrong right so I want to respond to two things that you you said there on the Ouija board case that doesn't show it either right because all the Ouija board is showing is that we are prone to confusion about when we're using free will when we aren't or we aren't when we are so so that doesn't it's not conclusive it's not conclusive but it shows that our introspection is not very reliable right and there's lots of examples of this in
• 21:00 - 21:30 the empirical psychology literature my question objection and concern for this argument you gave that why do we identify with the commanding will and not the commanded arm I think your answer is coherent right especially in this uh world of Will To Power where we where we like to feel powerful but surely the libertarian not the political libertarian but someone who believes in free will surely they have a very coherent response which is identify with the will because I'm the one willing it because I'm the one who's
• 21:30 - 22:00 raising the arm and the the will is more me because I don't know it's a soul or something then the arm is me the problem is that's not really an argument it just presupposes what's in contention right so we have a data point the experience of e exercising Free Will right and N gives an explanation for the data point which is that it appeals to our desire for a feeling of power right the libertarian answer just doesn't even
• 22:00 - 22:30 look like an explanation just presupposes libertarianism is true right now if we had other reasons to think libertarianism was true okay but the problem is we don't have those other reasons right and and certainly for n is not even going to consider that because the idea that you could have a will that is self-caused which is what libertarianism effectively requires is a notion NE to thinks makes no sense right I I think reading your book very closely that there's actually another argument
• 22:30 - 23:00 in addition to this first one about why we identify with the command when it comes to the phenomenology of the will which is that our thoughts themselves the thought I will raise my hand itself is not willed can you elaborate on that argument okay yes so so n does think right that it is a striking fact as he puts it that a thought comes when it wants not when I want what does he mean by that elaborate there um what he means is that um for most of our thoughts there is no
• 23:00 - 23:30 sense in which we even have the experience of Free Will with them we just find ourselves with the thought right and and I think this is a correct observation about even the internal phenomenology of it U occasionally right if we're you know running through an argument in our head it may start to feel like we're willing it but with an awful lot of thoughts that we have they're just we find ourselves with them right and
• 23:30 - 24:00 a thought precedes an action but if the thought comes when it wants if I didn't will the thought into being right and even if the thought caused the action I still wouldn't be responsible for the action because I wasn't responsible for the thought because It Came Upon me I didn't will it into being that's the point of this argument right in my push back as you can tell I'm quite sympathetic to the Free Will position is why then is there a gradation of experience of willing like
• 24:00 - 24:30 you said when we're having this conversation right now you said in our break that it was very tenuous because it feels like you're having to expend a lot of will to do it there are thoughts no I didn't say anything about will in my phenomenology it feels like I'm being very engaged now I'm being engaged but the point is what I'm objecting to is the use of the word will right right I it it this is intense right but I don't feel like I'm exercising a lot of free will in this right kind of on you know my n autopilot to put it that way which
• 24:30 - 25:00 is I I'm hearing what you're saying and I'm responding to things you're saying and arguments come to mind and a lot of thoughts come to mind just because you say something but I don't as it were will them into my mind right well let me draw out I think the weaker version of this claim which still I think is going to be fine for my my point which is there are certain thoughts as you say that feel a lot less willed in fact there are certain thoughts where you try not to will them into existence like don't think about Pink Elephant right people think about a pink elephant why
• 25:00 - 25:30 is there this gradation of the feeling of willing a thought if all of them are unwilled um okay do you agree with that by the way that there's I'm not sure I think there's a gradation what I think is that sometimes we may have the experience of Free Will with our thoughts and the example I gave is we're working through an argument that has logical steps yes right um but I think that's relatively infrequent and it's not true of most of our thoughts but
• 25:30 - 26:00 that's fine right because the Free Will person doesn't say everything needs to be the outcome of free will but okay but notice right it would have to be the case that the thoughts that precede action have to be um thoughts where we have the experience of Free Will with them right and that would be a very small subset of the actions where I think we feel we have free will so you would already lose quite a lot that's fine yeah right um well it's not going to be fine for most Defenders of Free Will um but but
• 26:00 - 26:30 secondly um even that all right even that argument is potentially vulnerable to the the first argument namely that um the phenomenology admits of a debunking explanation right that we feel like we are willing the thought that precedes the action because it contributes to the to the feeling of power one last point on this argument that that n provides us if all of our will is a mere symptom or
• 26:30 - 27:00 it's an epiphenomenon of really underlying unconscious activities yeah why do we have Consciousness why aren't we just unconscious automatons right okay so n's view about this and again I think it's a kind of preent view from the standpoint of contemporary psychology um is that he thinks most of our mental life uh can proceed unconsciously and we actually now know that this is true that a huge amount of our mental life does proceed unconsciously and he takes up the
• 27:00 - 27:30 question why is any part of it conscious right his answer to the question why any part of our mental life becomes conscious um is because that was necessary basically for society right that some of our mental activity had to become conscious which for N means had to be formulable in language language and Consciousness go hand in hand for n he's quite explicit about that um language develop and Consciousness developed in order to make social
• 27:30 - 28:00 coordination much more effective right I can do a tremendous amount of what I need to do mentally unconsciously but if you and I are to coordinate right so that we catch the tiger you know um we're gonna have to talk right we're going to have to be able to share some of our mental life with each other in order to have a community do the things needed to sustain the community so that's hypothesis not a crazy hypothesis that
• 28:00 - 28:30 um it facilitated a kind of social coordination that would have been impossible if all mental activity were unconscious that's his answer right so I'm having a bit of trouble with his hypothesis because it's not clear to me why language and communication out of all the different faculties is what necessitated Consciousness because there seems to be other uh conscious activities that are even more intense than language okay sry so that wasn't quite the thesis the thesis was that Consciousness developed in order to
• 28:30 - 29:00 facilitate social coordination and Consciousness is only possible with language so language and Consciousness develop to facilitate social coordination that's the thesis right I mean computers certainly communicate without being conscious but even in the human realm right but human beings can't right but I'm I don't know about any studies on this but surely something about smelling an odor of fear from my companions or or something like that that unconsciously sets me on tilt or
• 29:00 - 29:30 surely there there's surely there's ways to communicate that that's that's unconscious no surely is begging the question there it's not obvious that that's surely I mean I suppose it could have been the case that um look human beings could have evolved telepathy right then that would have but we didn't we that didn't happen so might there have been other ways to facilitate social coordination I guess possibly but that isn't our species right such as your elevated sense of smell right that does all the work that you know my
• 29:30 - 30:00 telling you there's a snake in the bush does right I don't know the snake in the bush it seems a lot more efficient right and tell everyone back in the village there's a snake in the bush to stay in their tents right or whatever it is that's that's the simple idea so the two arguments we've covered so far the first one about the the alternative ulterior reasons why people want to invent Freedom as well as this phenomenological deconstruction as you say they're not takedown so so what other reasons that n does n give us for why this position is
• 30:00 - 30:30 to be preferred so he has a general thesis about why human beings do the things they do right and it is that the the human mind is kind of a bundle of drives that are mostly unconscious drives seek expression in various ways and their expression involves us doing various things okay now you can ask the question why think that picture is true answer is he thinks it provides the best explanation of a lot of observable behavior and it provides a better
• 30:30 - 31:00 explanation than for example people engage in conscious rosin and choose what to do based on based on their Free Will right I mean that's I I'm putting it a little crudely here but that really is the structure of it um you know n is uh he's not the first person to theorize the existence of an unconscious right um but he is one of the first to give uh a lot of examples and evidence that would support the claim that there are
• 31:00 - 31:30 unconscious aspects of mental life that figure in the explanation of our Behavior right um and Freud then picks up on this um you attempted to bolster this position very helpfully with a lot of contemporary Empirical research mostly focused on how her heritability affects us here's one quote of the total explained variance 59% was explained by the criminality of the biological iCal parents we're talking about the criminality of children here and only
• 31:30 - 32:00 19% was explained by the criminality of adoptive parents so if I have a kid even if the kid is adopted from day one 59% of the variance of the kid's criminality is not going to be explained by the adoptive parents by your criminality by my criminality right and so it's really through empirical observations like these that one starts to build a severe doubt of free will is that what I'm getting um that is certainly an important part of the empirical evidence and this is broadly in the family of
• 32:00 - 32:30 what's called behavioral genetics um behavioral genetics you know famously involves two kinds of studies you mentioned one which is where a child is adopted into a different family and we know something about the behavioral character or personality characteristics of the birth parent and of the adoptive parents and then we see what has the biggest influence answer is birth parent right um you know not absolute but the bigger influence and then the other are the famous Minnesota twin studies where
• 32:30 - 33:00 twins are separated at Birth into two different families for adoption and then it turns out that for example they have very similar personality traits extraversion neuroticism you know this is how contemporary psychologists talk about the big p Big Five personality traits that um the the biological parents the heritability of their personality traits has a lot to more to do with explaining that of the kids now
• 33:00 - 33:30 what does this suggest and how's this relevant to n um it suggests that as n seems to believe um people have different sort of fundamental psychophysical characteristics that doesn't necessarily mean there's a gene for extraversion or a gene for neuroticism all right the pathway for the heritability is an in could be an interaction between genes and and environment so it get very complicated but the point is is that there is a sort of a psychological core of the person
• 33:30 - 34:00 right that is there at Birth um and manifests itself largely regard not entirely regardless but independently of a lot of big differences in in environment right and nature does seem to have a view like this he originally encountered it in schopenhauer right schopenhauer you know famously joked it was a funny joke because he didn't have kids himself he said you know the children basically arrive with a
• 34:00 - 34:30 character and then it just unfolds over their life but it's continuous throughout and N has a fairly similar view in the sense that you know we arrive with sort of a package of drives or dispositions and the environment may affect them but it can't fundamentally change the type of person we are right so what I want to be clear here is on both what determines us completely and and um how we are determined completely so it sounds like the the first question
• 34:30 - 35:00 is a combination of our environment our unconscious and our genetics our nature and that and not free will those things sufficiently explain all of our decisions and when it comes to how we are influenced it's not like we are faded to hold a specific belief I like pink I like blue what we are determined on is more like in our personality if if that's a if that's a good word so I'm a conformist or I like standing out and so
• 35:00 - 35:30 this leads to the interesting conclusion that the the person with the same type fact in different cultures can manifest in completely different ways maybe not completely different but yes different in some ways right so if I'm a conformist in Los Angeles I wouldn't want to Veil my daughters but if I'm a conformist in a Muslim country I would want to Veil my daughters so I think that's fair despite the uh The Superficial difference there's a deeper similarity I I think that's right and I think the example is is is an app one um you know we could um you know the
• 35:30 - 36:00 question is what are the relevant psychological types um and as I say contemporary psychology they talk about extroversion introversion neuroticism there's one or two others in the big five I forget the other two you know n talks about slavish psychology right he he doesn't he doesn't have sort of a neat map of them you know one difference between n and Freud is Freud has a simpler set of categories um but um but I think think the the basic picture fits your your example right so let me push
• 36:00 - 36:30 this one last way I don't think anyone who is sober in in modernity can deny that our genes our environment and our unconscious uh uh drives can determine what we do but again niches make a much more totalitarian claim there he says it they fully determine what they do I I'm still not seeing where that argument in everything we discussed today is so I'm I'm not sure I want to say everything right I believe there was a chair here and I sat down right I mean there was
• 36:30 - 37:00 some conscious reasoning that that that went on uh that was relevant there um what I think is important for n is the claim that it determines as it were the most important things right deciding to sit in the chair is not the most important thing I did in my life um oh so there is still some room for potentially potential Freedom yeah I so the right the the Target and this goes back to what I was calling the reasons responsive compatibilism right the real Target here is what you might call
• 37:00 - 37:30 reflective Consciousness this is the term Matia ricardi uses in in his very good book on n's philosophical psychology it's the kind of reasoning we supposedly engage in when we're making moral decisions right or immoral decisions or major decisions in our life right and there the the radical claim that n makes is reflective Consciousness is epiphenomenal it goes back to the discussion we were having about the idea that Consciousness and language um develop under social pressure the need
• 37:30 - 38:00 for social coordination right and what that means is that if the reason parts of our mental life are becoming conscious is so we can facilitate social coordination then the language we're going to use to describe the relevant bits of our mental lives is only the language that's necessary to facilitate the coordination not necessarily the full complexity it's even worse because it's a display right when I'm communicating I need to
• 38:00 - 38:30 sort of put on an appearance well there's there's that other complicated feature right of social interaction but before we even get to that just the you know the simple things um I need to communicate to you that you need to avoid the the snake that just bit me in the bushes right um what you need to know about my mental life and my experience is pretty superficial right you need to know it was unpl that snakes bite right um You don't need
• 38:30 - 39:00 to know much more you don't need to know the full set of feelings and experiences that I had all my thoughts of snakes all the nuances of my perception of the snake in other words because conscious mental life has as its purpose facilitating social coordination it can sort of flatten out what's really going on in our mental life most of our mental life need not become conscious and in that regard therefore it fun fundamentally falsifies as n often says it's a very superficial
• 39:00 - 39:30 only partial representation of the mental events that are actually going on in the mind that's fascinating we're running a bit short on time so I want to get to part three about the prescriptions what what do we do if we buy into n's uh his fatalism but I just want to end of part two I want to make something crystal clear here I I'm fully on board that most of our lives are determined in ways that people think they actually have free agency where whereas they don't n has shown me so many of these Pathways that determine
• 39:30 - 40:00 our actions or highly push us to certain directions rather than others but none of this shows that we don't have free will right like that there could be an inkling all n wants to argue is the uh uh immense ways we are determined is is that right or he wants to go stronger and say the full um no I think it's stronger than that if if you accept the the claims and the evidence that that he offers I mean the question is you know if his picture of the mind is right then you have to answer the question where's
• 40:00 - 40:30 the will in what sense is it causally undetermined if it's if it's causally determined then you know now we're back in the humei and Frankfurt camp but we don't know what determines the action then how are those arguments supposed to so it really does I think create a fundamental problem a full court press so to speak yeah right so my position here is I maintain I'm very first of all I'm not a metaphysician so this is going to be a very naive position but um to me I don't
• 40:30 - 41:00 think anyone has shown conclusively what types of causalities do or even don't exist right physics for the longest time thought it was Newtonian billiard balls crashing together now we have Quantum I don't know how that's supposed to help uh help sort of free will but it's clear that physics has no idea how to square the classical with the quantum Kant has a great argument I think about atemporality if there's an atemporal realm then obviously there opens up so many different causalities modes of causal and physics is showing us that time is not as simple as we thought it was right
• 41:00 - 41:30 and then there's the argumentation that we're not sure that this is base reality so whether that's a simulated reality whether that's a religious reality we have no access to what the real metaphysics could be so okay that last claim I think is absurd and nature would think it's absurd so I just want to take that I I want to take silly metaphysics which is just embarrasses philosophy off off the table because the points I think are more serious I'm not saying that there is a base I'm there is an alternate reality I'm saying it's not
• 41:30 - 42:00 clear to me that there isn't so I'm holding the skeptical position I'm not arguing that any of those things I said are true I'm saying I'm a skeptic i' I've read as many people as I as I could on this topic and no one seems to have any idea on not just what type of causality there are but also what type of causality there aren't and if I'm a skeptic if theory is so impotent then I just trust my phenomenology sometimes I feel like I'm in control sometimes I feel like I'm D say let me say if if you're really that kind of skeptic which which n has no truck with and I'm I
• 42:00 - 42:30 don't find very plausible um if you're really that kind of skeptic you know that hardly helps the case for free will right I mean why think there's free will if in fact this is all a simulation oh I'm saying I distrust Theory so I just default to my phenomenology I def default to my to my experience well that doesn't seem to follow from from that kind of skepticism but again let's let's put aside the Sci-Fi fantasy stuff I know philosophers love this stuff but you know you've talked to you've studied
• 42:30 - 43:00 philosophy you know philosophers have no judgment right right there we go um the uh on the causality question notice nothing in nich's arguments depends on uh the difference between causality and a Newtonian and and and Quantum world right there just none of it turns on that it does turn on having some notion of causal determination and you know you could pick aian view of causation you could pick a non-human View of causation um you know I'm perfectly happy with
• 43:00 - 43:30 certain kinds of constant conjunctions right um but n doesn't have a lot to say about about this question it turns out ricardi talks about this actually in his book that nche was familiar with humi views on cation and found them kind of kind of attractive um so I'm not sure that the the the genuine problem in the physics matters for purposes of Nature's argument as long as you think there's some notion of causal determination of the kind we employ all the time in
• 43:30 - 44:00 ordinary life that that's you know will suffice here um that I think is really all n says nothing in N rules out the sort of you know extravagant metaphysical scenarios right um and that's what I was precisely trying to deny by bringing up the physics to say that you know the physicists have no idea of of what type of causalities there are and there aren't and and anyways but but we still have a notion of causality that we use all the time right right and when I go to the doctor I count on the doctor having a plausible
• 44:00 - 44:30 view about causality or I'm not going to get better right right and and I I'm just skeptical about drawing too um too many conclusions from that ordinary language I what I'm trying to say it's not ordinary language I mean doctors work with a notion of causation all the time on the basis of which they recommend treatments right and they are none not affected At All by the physics right and God bless them for that we have to move to the third part which I think is the most interesting part why does all this matter if we buy in to
• 44:30 - 45:00 Nisha how does he want us to live can we even live as if we don't have free will good yes that's uh certainly a very important question n does think illusion is a necessary condition for life and I think one of those Illusions is the illusion that we have free will okay um but I still think so even from the first personal standpoint if that illusion is pretty hard to resist right I do think giving up belief in Free Will and giving up belief in moral responsibility does have a very important effect on how you think about
• 45:00 - 45:30 other people um and think about practices of praise and blame and and what you're actually doing legal philosophy which is your specialty yeah well in there there are implications in legal philosophy I mean look there's a contemporary philosopher Dirk per booom who has something basically like nich's view not for nich's uh reasons and he says therefore we can't base punishment on dessert right retribution right because people aren't blameworthy um he
• 45:30 - 46:00 says we ought to think of punishment on the model of quarantine right that is certain types of people are Criminal by Nature okay now I've tried to explain to him that as a matter of criminal policy this is crazy right um because you know you can see very well where that would lead right you know unless there's a crime genene you know it it would just be very creepy right um so I in a way I think the criminal law probably does it the right way you have to perform a wrongful act and there has to be some
• 46:00 - 46:30 evidence of your mental state I think it's largely fiction you know but um I think that's perfectly fine for criminal policy I think more about how we think about individuals so for example I I am never comfortable with saying anybody is evil it just done and this is the the nche influence to me um you know I think there are certain types of people who do certain things by nature and you know they're abhorent but are they blameworthy you know I'm kind of skeptical but the good isn't blameworthy
• 46:30 - 47:00 either that's the flip side of this right the good isn't isn't is praiseworthy isn't praiseworthy at least When Praise is directly symmetrical to to blame right um you know you can admire Boven without thinking that he exercised free will to become Beethoven um you could admire n and agree with n's own self assessment that it was fate that he be n right and you could still admire you know the genius the pros it was just a lucky stroke of nature um and there are lucky and unlucky Strokes of
• 47:00 - 47:30 Nature and I do think that would lead us to as it were be a little less um a little less moralizing and a little less prone to sort of blame and vindictiveness about things even though it wouldn't change the need for punishment and and so on so if I understand your position right you're saying that we still have to live and operate as if we had Free Will that's what from the first person right from the first person perspective it's what it's what's required of agency really to make decisions and do things but you're
• 47:30 - 48:00 saying what this view should change is to transform our relationship with others I think it transforms how we perceive others I think it can also transform how we perceive ourselves right that is if you understand that a lot of what you're doing is more faded than you realize then you can view you know part of what you do in a human life as learning who you really are um and that's roughly what n said about himself um that that is you know you can perhaps acquire more realistic sense of Who You
• 48:00 - 48:30 Are by observing your life not the phenomenological persective but what have you done what choices have you made what things have happened to you what kinds of relationships have you had and so on and so forth um so I do think that's another takeaway from this um let me ask you another question and this has to do with the idea that n thinks we shouldn't reject an idea just because it is false but on its impact to life n wants to create higher men creative genius sometimes he refers to the conquerors as well a constitutive
• 48:30 - 49:00 quality of these higher men so to speak seem to be that they exaggerate their own agency right Caesar thinking that he was faded to rule Rome or or n thinking that he's notice what you just said CES thought he was faded I'm not sure they exaggerate their own agency they may have enormous self-confidence or in Caesar's case actually think they are agents of Fate yeah yeah that this is very helpful when I said it I I I realized I had I had sort of trapped myself for my view it's interesting so n's
• 49:00 - 49:30 claim here could be that if you think everything is determined you will actually act with much more ferocity maybe but but again I think I think nature would be perfectly happy to grant that from the first person standpoint when we're thinking about what to do we should exaggerate we act as though we are exercising Free Will right and it's and and that's that's one of those Illusions you can't get away with I mean you can't eliminate that it's really tough to think about yourself the way
• 49:30 - 50:00 you might think about your dog right your dog doesn't have free will but you can't think about yourself that way right um and uh you know whether great human beings think of themselves as exercising Free Will I think it's an interesting empirical question but the Caesar example is funny in that regard because he really did have this sense of Fate um destiny right and that is something I've seen recur in biographies I've read actually of certain higher um you know or just a sense of you know
• 50:00 - 50:30 an absolute certainty of purpose right so it's not a matter of agen is just this is what I must do right um and I do think that's how n thinks about his own life though is as in his order biography says he only came to realize that over time that he saw what was unfolding in him right right this conversation corrected I think a wrong assumption I I'd come in with which is that um you have to exaggerate your own Freedom uh to to Really act with purpose but it
• 50:30 - 51:00 seems like if you go the opposite extreme if you think you're faded to do something then then that could be another motivating push now running out of time I want to ask you one last topic one last nian prescription if we don't accept Free Will becoming who one is tell us about this idea so nature famously says one becomes what one is without having the slightest idea what one is right um and and that's consistent in a way with the point we were just just discussing right that um
• 51:00 - 51:30 you know we may be more faded um to lead our lives in certain ways than we realize right and um but we're going to lead our lives in that way regardless of whether we know it and this is why figuring out who one is is a matter of Discovery even for the individual him or herself right just as I might Discover It by observing you I discover it by observing myself as well so this I think is the Practical takeaway which is that self-improvement
• 51:30 - 52:00 or child rearing isn't about trying to get yourself or your child to achieve some kind of abstract ideal of Virtues Of I don't know patience and humility it's more about observation what type of creature am I and then living a suitable life for that type of person is that right I think that I think that's roughly right and I will say as a parent of three children it is very important as a parent um to understand who the children are to understand that character they have arrived with um and
• 52:00 - 52:30 not to make certain kinds of Demands to force them into a certain too forign to it you don't make assumptions that limit their possibilities but you do have to really be alert to who they are and what they're capable of and how and when and their proclivities and so on one consequence however we might not like it is that I think n's Theory must make us judge people a lot a lot harsher based on their past so if you committed criminality that wasn't just a choice you're by Nature disposed to criminality
• 52:30 - 53:00 if you cheated once you're by Nature disposed to that is that a is that a conclusion I think that's too strong cheated ones committed one crime but but I do think that your basic intuition is right which is that um the fact that someone did something and maybe did it multiple times starts to be strong evidence about who they really are right um and so yes in that sense the past not just a once off but a past set of actions is strong evidence to the kind
• 53:00 - 53:30 the type of person that you really are in a way that you wouldn't associate with the Free Will view right oh they just chose to do it no no this is telling us something deep about their nature right right so it's harder for people to change in this in this framework on this picture yes there's limits to how much change you can expect I don't think I'm more convinced about not having free will but I think what you have shown me is the tremendous Pathways that we are B determined and which makes me able to take away a lot
• 53:30 - 54:00 of these practical prescriptions even without fully ejecting Free Will so I want to thank you for this interview you're very welcome thank you for all the good questions thanks for watching my interview if you want to go even deeper into these ideas then join my email list atre books. you'll not only get lectures and interviews but also transcripts book summaries and essays all to help you explore the key ideas from the most important books in history if you're interested Ed in learning more about n a great entry point would be his genealogy
• 54:00 - 54:30 of morality the main argument of that book is that everything you've learned to call morality equality compassion moderation altruism are actually values designed to suffocate greatness if you're curious why n thought so and how we came to hold these values in the first place then go check out my lecture on the genealogy you can find links to everything we discuss today in the description as well as on my website great books. thank you
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