Name: Free WILL vs. Determinism | Hn 38
Uploaded: 2024-07-06T17:00:00+00:00
Duration: 29 min 35 s
Description: It's more than just a great Rush song! On this one, Adam and Tyrone get into the pernicious issue of, do humans have free will? Or is everything predetermined in advance, cause & effect style? 00:00 –

1 year ago

Podcasts

It's more than just a great Rush song! On this one, Adam and Tyrone get into the pernicious issue of, do humans have free will? Or is everything predetermined in advance, cause & effect style?

00:00 – Intro. Adam asks Tyrone some deep questions about the hobo lifestyle.
01:52 -- Adam lays out the position of "hard determinism" as versus free will.
05:12 -- Before diving into the argument, Adam lays out some observations about which types of people usually land on which sides of this disagreement -- and perhaps why.
08:45 – Tyrone takes a brief detour into the "primacy of consciousness" controversy.
09:50 – Adam takes a stab at steel-manning the determinist position, then argues against it, leaning heavily on concepts like our own ignorance, self-evident truths, and where the burden of proof lies.
15:42 -- Adam supplements with an argument he poached from the great Bob Murphy! The concept of determinism seems to contradict the theory of evolution.
17:30 -- Tyrone sympathizes with the plight of the secular who seeks to replace God with determinism as a satisfactory answer to the mysteries of our nature. A cool reference to Star Trek: The Next Generation comes up. Also, a few more theories are taken out for a quick spin around the neighborhood. Einstein, quantum entanglement, etc.
20:50 -- Adam makes an appeal to proper epistemology and the usefulness of proper frames of reference.
25:13 -- What are the societal consequences of holding one or the other of these two beliefs?
28:18 – Outro.