Comments by "Kevin Street" (@Kevin_Street) on "Science Suggests Free Will Doesn't Exist" video.

  1. It's interesting. I really like your video and I'm impressed by the chain of reasoning behind it, but for the first time I can't agree with the conclusion. My honest belief is closer to what you say at 12:47, although I know you don't find that idea compelling or explanatory. Regardless, it's clear that our thoughts are influenced by the physical condition of our brains. When our brains are injured or diseased we can't think clearly. If the corpus callosum is severed one side of the brain appears to be unaware of what the other side perceives. When learning a new skill we can actually measure how our neurons become more efficient, requiring less activity to perform the same task. And something subtle happens as brains age - our thoughts become more settled and we tend to be less and less open to new ideas, perhaps because of an age related loss of brain plasticity. So at some level thought must emerge from the physical processes of our brain, at least in part. On the other hand, the idea that we have no free will seems pretty implausible. If consciousness is a purely mechanistic phenomenon, something we've evolved to explain to ourselves why we carry out actions that have already been computed somewhere in the brain, then why is human behavior so unpredictable? Why is there a need to "explain" anything at all? Why are we conscious in the first place? In the end, I think "free will" is still a mystery. You say you can't find a place for it, so it can't exist. I say that just shows our knowledge of existence is missing something fundamental. There are still certain features of human existence like free will and our perception of the passage of time that can't be explained (and probably won't be fully explained) no matter how much we learn about how the universe works.
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