[00:00:02] Host Create clip Dan is ranked number five among with the Glow World's Global Thinkers. No. Now one has to temper this. Uh, do you want to guess who's number one? Al Gore. Metric Lee. It works, but number two is Is your gun Have Irma's? Ah ah! Right behind Dan is Elon Musk Lawrence Lessig, Jared Diamond of Oliver Sacks. Peter Higgs. Ah, Daniel condiment. Anyway, fascinating list. But I think to be ranked not only the top 10 but number five on that list is impressive. Means a lot of people are trying to find out and are interested in What Dan Dan is doing tonight he's going to talk to us about is free will and illusion. What can cognitive science tell us? So please join me in welcoming Dan Dennett. Thank you, Jerry. It's great to be back. I love Santa Fe in the Santa Fe Institute. I always every day I learned something here that I don't think I could learn anywhere else s so good to see such a nice audience. Can we have the lights up a little bit higher? I really like to see faces. This isn't this isn't theatre good? Thank you very much.

[00:01:25] Host Create clip Well, I know it is sort of theater, but I I depend on seeing faces in case anybody goes to sleep. No. Well, I have to say I have some bad news. Um, if you were to look in your wallet right now, if you have any $20 bills in your wallet, I have to tell you, they're all counterfeit, every last one of them, and the ones and the fives and tens. And if you've got $100 bill in there, it's counterfeit too. In fact, not just the bills, but all money is counterfeit. There hasn't been any real money since 1973 when we went off the gold standard. It's all just an illusion. Money doesn't really exist. It's just illusion. I hope you're not too heartbroken about that. And and be careful how you use that information to also baseballs hit over the Green Monster and Fenway Park in Boston. They're not really home runs. There aren't any real home runs. They're all illusions. Yeah, I'm free, Wilson. Illusion too.

[00:02:42] Host Create clip Hint. I'm gonna be arguing that those who argue that free will is an illusion are arguing in the same spirit of these other two arguments. You can see there's a sort of point to what they're saying, but it doesn't have the implications that you might think. In other words, don't burn your bills. Don't throw away your your bank accounts. Uh, free will. I'm gonna use it. It's a CZ. Riel is money, which is pretty riel. It's not an illusion, but we have to see what the arguments are. Um ah, little experiment. Now, first, um, please wave your right hand on me. Thank you very much for a lot of you did it too. Now, uh, all of you do this. How many of you can do this? If you Now you see, those are paradigmatic voluntary acts. Why did you do them? Well, let's pause a second. I asked you. There wasn't any overriding reason not to. What the heck? You're cooperative. So you went along with me.

[00:04:01] Host Create clip If I had asked you to stand up and undress, you probably would not have gone along with that. But if you had, that would have been a voluntary Act two. The idea is this is how you can prove to yourself that you are capable of voluntary act. See, see if you are actually able to control yourself when somebody asks you to do something, when you ask yourself to do something and some people you gets worse, noting they can't do them, there are people afflicted, people who are in locked in syndrome or they have some other disability where the voluntary acts are really impossible for them. Lucky you, you're not in that category. You're not in that category at all. Now one might say that that shows it voluntary acts. Ah, not an illusion. Uh, if somebody said voluntary acts are an illusion, you'd say, Well, no, no, we just demonstrated to ourselves that we can perform voluntary, Have to do another one you know do and do something. See, you can do it.

[00:05:06] Host Create clip None of you did right then, and that's and that's a voluntary act. Two. Refraining from doing what somebody says is a paradigm case of a voluntary act. Um, well are voluntary accent allusion. Some people seem to think so. I'm going to use a deep thinker now to introduce the themes of my talk. I've done this so often some of you may have seen this. It's my favorite exposition of free will. It's by none other than Dilbert. And here's Dilbert, Dogbert says. Do you think the chemistry of the brain controls what people do? Of course, then how can we blame people for their actions? Because people have free will to do? Is they twos? Are you saying that free will is not part of the brain? Of course it is. But it's the part of the brain that's out there just being kind of free. Okay, so you're saying the free will part of the brain is exempt from the natural laws of physics? Obviously, otherwise, we couldn't blame people for anything they do.

[00:06:30] Host Create clip Do you think the free will part of the brain is attached, or does it just float nearby? Shut up. Now that really does capture. Uh, not just the everyday notion of free will, but that sort of state of play among the scientists and the philosophers. It's a It's an embarrassing issue because the themes, the main themes, were all there and and very nicely said so Now we might ask again, is free will and illusion or not. What I'm gonna do tonight is ah, with a bit of an experiment. What I'm going to do is abandon one of the central terms of philosophy, which has become almost useless, and that is free will. It's the tug of war over how to define this term has become the whole issue. So I'm just gonna set it aside. I'm not changing the topic. I'm just changing the verb you, JJ, and I'll probably slip and call it free will. It's nothing, but let's just forget about how to define free will for a while. And why should we do that? Well, because the traditional concept of free will has to essential features. One of them is that free Will is undetermined, that is free will versus determinism, and the other one is that free will is required for moral responsibility. You don't have free will. You're not morally responsible.

[00:07:59] Host Create clip Now. These two themes do not sit well together. The question is, are they both true, In which case we've got a problem, or might we define free will and understand free will in a way in which one was was true but negligible, trivial and the other one true, unimportant? Well, since people simply will not abandon the first point, especially scientists have discovered. I'm just going to give them the term. Okay, You could have free will define it your way free will and determinism are incompatible. No, I'm gonna drop the term and I'm gonna turn my attention to the question of whether moral responsibility is possible and what the science have to tell us about moral responsibility. We just leave free will out of it now, This cognitive science kind of neuroscience, any science have anything to tell us about moral responsibility? That's now the topic. And a lot of people think it does. I think they're right. But not for the reasons that they've been saying. So that's what I'm gonna be looking at.

[00:09:18] Host Create clip No. Still, on the topic of my of my experiment, I want to point out that in my career I face this many times. There's sort of two options I can say free will doesn't exist, or I can say free will exists. It just isn't what you think it is. Oh, my policy in the past on various topics has been the 2nd 1 and this has led to some very frustrating campaigns. I say consciousness is really It just isn't what you think it is. And people here consciousness isn't real. I say beliefs a real, They're real patterns. They just aren't what you think they are and people here Then it says that belief talk is a useful fiction. I don't know what to do about this, but I get inspiration from a book by a friend of mine, Lee Siegel, a wonderful ah ah, philosopher of religion and magician who's written a book. I highly recommend net of magic about Indian street magic in its history. And there's a passage in the in the code of that book, which I've become my my talisman. In a way, he says, I'm writing a book on magic. I explain, and I'm asked, real magic by real magic. People mean miracles. Dramaturgical acts, supernatural powers. No, I answer, conjuring tricks. Not really magic riel Magic, in other words, refers to the magic that's not riel, while the magic that's really that can actually be done is not really magic.

[00:11:11] Host Create clip Now, what I've discovered in my own career is it for many people consciousness. Let's say if your view of consciousness is that it's not really magic, then you're not talking about consciousness. They insist that consciousness is magic. For instance, here's one of my critics. The problem here is with the claim that consciousness is identical with physical brain states, the more dented at all, tried. Explain to me what they mean by this, the more convinced I become that what they really mean. Visit consciousness doesn't exist. Well, given what right Robert Wright thinks consciousness is, I have to agree. That kind of consciousness doesn't exist, But consciousness existing just isn't what you think of this, how about free Will is magic. Well, my old friends and off time opponent Jerry Voter puts it very succinctly in a review of my last book on free Will, uh, one wants to be what tradition has it that Eve was when she bit the apple perfectly free to do otherwise. So perfectly free, in fact, that even God couldn't tell which way she jumped.

[00:12:30] Host Create clip In other words, one wants a miracle. Another philosopher, Jalen Straws, in reviewing the same book. So is this. He doesn't establish the kind of absolute free will and moral responsibility that most people believe most people want to believe in and do believe that can't be done. And he knows it. He's right. I don't establish the kind of absolute free will and moral responsibility that most people want to believe in and do believe in that can't be done. And I know it. The question is, why do people want absolute free will? Why I'm gonna try to answer that Wouldn't practical free will be good enough. So now it's time to look at what the scientists say. Here's one wolf singer, eminent German neuroscientists. No one is responsible for their actions, since always predetermined by the brain. Here's another British eminent neuroscientist, Chris Frith spot if it's possible to predict people's actions on the basis of neural activity that precedes their conscious decisions. If so, then free will is an illusion. My good friend Sam Harris published a book a few years ago called Free Will, and In it he argues that free will is an illusion. He's he's a sort of scientist. He's got a phD in neuroscience, But here's some praise from scientists for this book. Well, he's not.

[00:14:10] Host Create clip He's very good. He's just not in doing academic neuroscience research. Now he's a writer with a phD in neuroscience. Paul Bloom is the Yale professor Who's the editor in chief of behavioral brain sciences? Very distinguished cognitive scientists. If you believe in free will or know someone who doesn't, here's the perfect antidote. A good friend Jerry Coyne, eminent University of Chicago evolutionary biologists and blogger Free will is an illusion so convincing the people simply refused to believe that we don't have it and free will. Sam Harris combines neuroscience and psychology toe lay this illusion to rest at last. Okay, so that's quite a quite a kn endorsement of the idea that free will is an illusion. And it's not just cognitive scientists that do it. Even a few physicists add their voices. Here's, you know, and they're not unknown physicists here. Stephen Hawking. I won't bother reading the whole thing, just that the M it seems that we are no more than biological machines and that free will is just an illusion. And then just one more being endowed with higher inside and more perfect intelligence watching man and his doings would smile about man's illusion that he was acting according to his own free will.

[00:15:46] Host Create clip Who said that Well, I think you know, just so this is a fairly formidable team of people saying that free will is an illusion. If you may remember, I'm going to say basically, they're making an argument, which is close kin $2 or an illusion, home runs or illusions. So we'll see. By the way, they're not all scientists. Take this wee one, I think, is worthy of mention is Mike Gazzaniga. He's a neuroscientist, indeed, very eminent, and in his book, Who's in Charge? He has a much more subtle and nuanced view. He he knows better now, faced with this wall of overconfident eliminated ism, as we philosophers insist on calling it, I hate to think of the mother of philosophy. PhD friends Ask her What's your child's dissertation on? Limited of Ism? Oh yeah, use of philosophers. So anyway, as I said before, I'm going to temporarily abandon the term free will and concentrate on the rest of what these scientists claim. And that is that this lack of free will makes a moral difference.

[00:17:08] Host Create clip And you may have noticed that they do say that, for instance, here's Chris Frith again. Ah, if it is possible to predict people's actions on the basis of natural activity that precedes neural activity, that precedes their conscious decisions. If that's so, then free will is an illusion. Now, there've been quite a few experiments that have drawn the attention of people. Um, in the past, I used to talk about the work of Benjamin. Live it. But I'm not gonna talk about that today. There are a lot of problems with that. I'm going to talk about a more recent experiment which has had much attention in the scientific literature by soon at all in nature neuroscience. And, uh, I'm just going to briefly explain how how this works. This is a diagram from there. Uh, so you get your head in an FMRI scanner and what you're seeing at half 2nd 500 millisecond intervals are just single letters of the alphabet appearing little faster. See, half a second, sort of like that.

[00:18:10] Host Create clip So you get one every half a second, and then after a bit of them, you get one more screen, and it has letters on it which are, uh, which match the letters. And so what's your job in the end is to push a button for which, uh, which letter was on the screen when you did something? What when you decided to either push the left button with the right button. This is what they say at some point when they felt the urge to do so. This is an unmotivated free act. They were too freely decide between one of two buttons operated by the left and right index fingers and press it immediately in parallel. They should remember the letter presented when their motor decision was consciously made. So here we are, back to this again. So if at the moment you decided to push the left button the letter that you saw was D, then you would after, you know, you pressed the left button somewhere in this interval. And then when this screen came on, you press that button.

[00:19:24] Host Create clip That's it. That's the experiment. Everybody understand it so far. Okay? No. What's the result? Remember, I was a little Let's be clear. You say the letter that you were conscious of at the time that you consciously decided, okay? And you're not supposed to do something like I'm gonna wait till I see a letter G and then I'm going to push the button. No, no, no. You're supposed to let the spirit move you or somebody supposed to. This is supposed to be an act gratuity. A sudden motiveless left or right, And you're simply supposed to notice what letter was visible to you when you made that decision. Okay, And here's what they found out. I won't bother going through the slide in detail. You'll be grateful to know, um, this is the key slide because it shows activity in the brain that they have t used out with their with their algorithms, which shows that, um, as much as actually 10 seconds before the subject is aware of having decided to push left or right.

[00:20:43] Host Create clip They've got evidence of whether it's going to be left to right. So it's a mind reading device of sorts. Yeah. Now, does that show that people don't have free will? It seems to meet Chris Fritz condition. This is using evidence drawn from neural patterns. Seconds 10 seconds before person is conscious of the decision, it looks as if the decision is, uh, an epi phenomenon or is not playing any role. The brain has already decided long before you think it has. That's the suggestion. Now this is you notice I put predict here in scare quotes. And that's because it isn't real time prediction. It's it's scientific prediction that is to say, it takes them much more than 10 minutes of number crunching with their data mining algorithms to get this evidence out. So if you wanted to make it into a real prediction, what you'd have to do is seal in an envelope, the actual left right choices that they made and the facts about when they made them by their this objective facts and then let the computer's crank. And then they would come out with a bunch of predictions about what you'd read when you open the envelope and they'd be right pretty much they can do this. Prediction. Not not perfectly, but much, much better than chance. And there are technical problems with this Experimental setup have been many replication, so it's not.

[00:22:29] Host Create clip The basic result is not in doubt. One way or another, you can get this sort of effective in A lot of people would have done it, and I I'm just going to assume for the rest of the talk that we should take this at face value. So it's important that these aren't predictions in real time? Not yes, but if you can do it with slow number crunching, then maybe in the future you can do it with fast number crunching. So that's that's the sort of experimental evidence that we're talking about now. What does this show? I'm going to turn to Dilbert again because he has some words of wisdom on this subject. Free will is an illusion. Humans are nothing but moist robots. Just relax and let it happen. I love this term moist robot, because I think it's it's rife. I think cognitive science does show that were moist robots that's really quite un controversial. According to Science, where we're mammals, we have non miraculous brains, just like other mammals and other animals. Our brains have no mysterious extra special magical powers were moist robots made of robots made of robots. By the time you get down to the in the sides of the cells, you find all those little motor proteins trudging around doing their work. They're robots. They're nano robots, they really are.

[00:24:13] Host Create clip So that's what we are, and deliberate draws a conclusion that since we're moist robots, we don't have free will and notice that, he adds. the important conclusion. Just relax and let it happen. In other words, you're not responsible. A moist robot couldn't be responsible. Another very wise observer of the scene. Tom Wolfe, writing about this well quite a few years ago, actually by now in an essay called Sorry But Your Soul just Died has this to say As usual, it's a little hyperventilated. The conclusion people out beyond the laboratory walls. Air drawing is the fix is in. We're all hardwired that and don't blame me. I'm wired wrong. Well, I think Wolf is right. That is the lesson that is leaking out outside the laboratory walls or, in many cases, being trumpeted by the laboratory directors we don't have free will. Now we're why heard wrong, says Wolf. Wealth wired Wrong. What would it be to be wired right? Or is there such a thing? Could we be wired right for responsibility? Or what would it take? In other words, for a moist robot toe? Have moral responsibility.

[00:25:58] Host Create clip This is the question, and the answer is an obvious. Now, if you think that you if you're a moist robot, you can't have more responsibility, because only somebody with an immortal immaterial, magical, transcendental soul could have free will, then that settles it for you. But that's not a scientific of thesis at all. And if the scientists are falling for that, then they're being very, uh, unimaginative Indeed. So now the question is this. Cognitive science show that these requirements for moral responsibility cannot be met. So I want to look now at moral responsibility as eligibility in the Moral Agents Club, we members make the rules, which are not entirely arbitrary. Rules often require bright lines and penalties for violations. Um, you probably belonged to some organizations that have membership rules of one sort or another. But if you want a simple example that everybody finds, I think fairly un controversial, let's talk about the age at which you may apply for a driver's license. What is it in in New Mexico's? It's 16 15 but then you get your license at 16 50.

[00:27:26] Host Create clip Okay, varies from state to state. That's interesting because it means this is a politically drawn bright line. It's not something it's not discovered by science. It's not arbitrary. I think we can all agree that 14 is 13 is too young and 20 is older than it has to be. So we're in the ballpark and we might if we want to move the line. That's a political option that we can consider. And we could use scientific evidence gathered from studies about about Milo Nation in the brain and maturity and all sorts of other things if we wanted to. But we're pretty happy with the line we have. Most people are, and it's important to realize it is a bright line and its conventional, but not completely arbitrary. There's good reasons why it is approximately where it is. I think that's a that's a toy issue that's a toy solution to a problem. And the whole issue of moral responsibility has that same logic behind it's like the driving age. So now back to illusions. Let me see how many of you think that dollars air riel, I do real enough for me. Well, if you don't have them, they sure seem real and home runs and attorneys from doctors and bishops.

[00:28:58] Host Create clip These are all really social constructions. No, some people may be reaching for their gun at this point, I think, Oh no, one of these post modern social construction of reality. People know not the social construction of reality. There are people out there ideologues who argue that, you know mountains aren't really and Adams and electrons aren't really zoologist. Social construction DNA is just a social construction. That's not the view I'm making, asserting. I'm talking about the construction of social reality, which is different baseballs. I was really as they could be. Home runs are real, too, but their social constructions this is one thing by the John Cyril it's right about. I don't often agree with John, so it's nice to be able to agree with him about this. We're talking about the construction of social reality, not the social construction of reality. Most reality doesn't need any help from social construction, but some of it does. There wouldn't be doctors without social construction, and what I'm going to claim is that free will is a riel social construction, and none the worse for that.

[00:30:17] Host Create clip And I'm going to do it in terms of the Moral for Moral Agents Club. Now, this is not a new perspective. It owes a lot, of course, to Thomas Hobbes and the Leviathan and other Contract Arian theories. You may remember from reading the Leviathan in college that the Hobbs said that the life in the state of nature was nasty, brutish and short, and then people came together. Is this sort of adjust so story? And they had a social contract and that created society. There was just a state of nature before, and when it did, we created good and evil. When we formed the social contract, very important to realize that Hobbs was saying something quite radical. He wasn't saying We created the concepts of good and evil or the words good and evil. He was saying We created good and evil themselves before the social contract that was nothing. Morality just didn't exist. There's predation in the world of nature, lions and tigers and and all sorts of horrible parasites doing all sorts of terrible things to other beings. There's no a. There's no morality there. It's all a more morality just does not exist in the state of nature. It came into existence with the creation of a social contract.

[00:31:36] Host Create clip Now this is a I think, a very attractive you. It can easily be parodied and made to look foolish. Any rate I am going down a path that has been well trodden by others before. And we created moral responsibility at the same time we created morality. Well, is it Israel? It's Israel is dimes, dollars and doctors real enough to make a really important difference. Well, now, how do we look at this? Then we want to look at what an engineer might call the specs for a morally competent agent. I put it in this engineering term because I don't want to rule out robots. If you wanted to make a robot that was a moral agent, what would it have to have in the way of competences? The same competence is you and I have. But having blood being born of women doesn't necessarily appear on the list. We'll see. Here are some. If those do, then we can add them to this. These other set of specs. First of all, you got to be well informed, not just well informed about lots of things, but well informed about the things that matter morally.

[00:32:50] Host Create clip You have to know about what it is that hurts people. And what is that people care about? And you have to know about basic understanding of causation. So you know what you better be careful about. And so for this on and of course, you're supposed to know about the law. Ignorance of the law is no excuse is just a very vivid, intense attitude on that. Um, you gotta have roughly well ordered desires if you're obsessive or just completely deranged in the way you are unable to control yourself and your your your disabled, you don't have the competence you need. You have to be his concepts moved by reasons that is, if somebody offers you reasons. If somebody tries to reason with you, you can deal with that in a rational way. You can respond to that. In fact, the word responsible really comes from the idea that a responsible agent can respond in a given. Take a discussion of the reasons for against some course of action, those air familiar. I want to add a few more, which are less often talked about. One is that you're not being controlled by another agent, that your punishable will come back to these and the granddaddy of them all that you could have done otherwise.

[00:34:15] Host Create clip Now I think that these six requirements are the heart of what it is to be a moral agent. And so now the question is this cognitive science or, for that matter, any other science, tell us whether or not we as human beings, normal adults, whether we can meet these conditions, Are we eligible for the Moral Agents Club? And I'm gonna talk about this one first not being controlled by another agent. I'm gonna give you a little thought experiment. So you get the idea of what's out at issue here. So here's four cases of causation where I am cause to do something by the actions of another agent. You ready? First case? I go to the doctor, and my doctor tells me that brand blobs would be good for my heart. I believe him. I go out and I buy some brand blobs. Its case. One case, too. I've been the supermarket, and I see a box of Kellogg's brand Bobs and I read in the yellow highlighted fine print about the health benefits of viewing Bob Brand blobs, and I decide.

[00:35:30] Host Create clip Okay, I buy a box of brand blobs. Here's case three. I see a box of brand blobs with a gorgeous picture of Cameron Diaz on it and I buy it case for I see a box of brand blobs, which has a secret microchip transponder that tweaks my nucleus accumbens in my brain. And I buy the box four cases. In every case, I am caused to buy a box of brand blobs by the intervention of some human agents. The first case. That's the way we want things to go, too. If only we could all be caused by a wise and knowledgeable advisor who has our interests heart. If only the advice of such an adviser could cause us to choose our our actions, we'd be in great shape. In the second case. It's pretty much the same. It's just that some at some slight in directness. I'm counting on the fact that Kellogg's has a reputation to defend its not it's not uh, uh, Sami. The scam artists brand blobs that are for sale here. This is Kellogg's lot is at stake. They've got credibility on the line if they say they've got a bunch of health facts, If they say that this is good, it's probably not too far off the mark.

[00:37:05] Host Create clip I'm not being foolish. I'm being reasonable perhaps to believe in the case of the Cameron Diaz here it matters What kind of ah, how sheltered a person I am. If I'm never noticed or heard about how sex sells Merchant, I said, Maybe I'm being manipulated. But you know, I I've been around. I know about these things. If I buy the box because of the beautiful picture of Cameron Diaz on it, it's because I want to reward the Kellogg's company for their good taste in women. Case for is the really problematic one, because here I'm being manipulated. I don't even know it. It's not appealing to my reason. It's short circuiting my responsibility machinery and just going straight to the water. That's manipulation. The difference is secrecy. I am being manipulated. I'm being caused by an agent whose attempt to cause me to do this is unknown to me, and that is very important. Being caused by the intervention of another agent. To do X does not mean being controlled by another agent. One of the rules of the Moral Agent Club is protect yourself from secret manipulators and notice. We all appreciate this.

[00:38:37] Host Create clip If we learned that there were these little transponders being put into products. We would all be in the market for something that would block the actions of this. Why? Because we want to go on being free, responsible agents. We don't want to be manipulated. So now when we go back to that quote from photo about what what one wants, one wants to be so free that even God couldn't tell. Why does one want that? One wants to be unpredictable. That's true and his wise. You do want to be unpredictable. Why? To avoid manipulation by other agents, an insight that comes to us from game theory. And if you read the opening chapters, I did recently re read it of Ah ah, the great fund Women on Morgenstern book on this lovely discussion of Robinson Crusoe and how it's everything changes when there's another agent on the island. Uh, I have a student. Liam Clegg was written a good paper on this on some of what I'm saying is sort of borrowed from him, so I have to certainly give him a reference. He hasn't published it yet, but it's available on his website at Caltech to a maxim from game theory is you gotta hide state from your opponents.

[00:40:01] Host Create clip If you don't, you're gonna be just turned into a money pump if you don't have a poker face. If you can't keep your decision making secret, you're in trouble. This is one of the requirements of a morally responsible agent that you can keep your thinking to yourself. But why absolutely secrets here? I think we have a prime case of a familiar philosophical step or a misstep where the flashing it was very important to be f. We all agree on that, so it must be best to be absolutely f. We love absolutism, have they? No, no, you don't need that practical free Will's good enough. Why not now? Let's go back too soon and his mind reading experiment. I do think there is a moral to that story that has relevance here, and it's this. Don't play rock paper scissors for money with soon. If your head isn't an f m r I machine, actually, you might just as well do it until he's got the speed up so we can make real time predictions.

[00:41:21] Host Create clip But I think that's the only moral from soon's experiment that has any serious bite now Clegg bythe way observes that soon's result is actually an adaptation for practical freewill. Why the fact that you that your brain is churning away and it's deciding that that you're gonna push the left button this time or you're gonna go rock rather than paper scissors? It's really good if that could be kept from you as long as possible so that you don't have a tell that can be read by your opponent. It preserves once poker face till the last moment. When you think about it, The best way to play rock, paper and scissors is to play randomly when you can't lose if you can really have, ever. But we're all bad at random. Siri's ran were bad, it just generating random members. So if you really got in a position where you had to play rock, paper, scissors with somebody and the important thing was not to lose big time, what you should do is go to a table of random numbers, something like that, and copy down 50 put him on a piece of paper and use them to determine what you do next. Just don't let anybody see your list because then you're sunk.

[00:42:48] Host Create clip So that's the implication of not being controlled by a mother and a Now, how about is punishable? This lies at the heart of a lot of the thinking of the motivation of the scientists. Um, when I want to do is not look at the criminal law. I want to look at the everyday distinction of those who are responsible adults in those who are not setting aside the criminal law and just considering the law of contracts. Um, I gave to my students a couple years ago. We're doing a seminar on on, uh, autonomous robots, and I gave them as a thought experiment assignment. What would it be take to make a robot that could sign a contract? Not for somebody else not as a surrogate for the robots owner, but on their own hook. What would a robot have to be so that you would sign a contract that you would You would make a binding promise with that robot, and what they eventually came to realize was, You gotta have skin in the game. Robots generally don't. But if you made a robot that had some serious needs that could be thwarted by the penalties that could be extracted. Word to break a promise. Then you could start making promises. With robots. You gotta have the same sort of vulnerability that the rest of us do.

[00:44:16] Host Create clip How many of you own a house or have a mortgage? Okay. You qualified to sign a contract, then you're a member of the Moral Agents Club. Thank you. Congratulations. But now let's consider signing a contract. You sign a contract, you're an egg. Then what happens? Well, probably pay a penalty because there's probably a penalty clause written right into the contract. What happens if you don't pay the penalty? What if you defy the court? Well, you get a subpoena under penalty. And if you defy that, what do you do? You go to jail for rehabilitation? No, for punishment. This is not rocket science. This is This is the justification for the institution of punishment. It's a consequential ist sketch. Here's a consequential ist sketch of why punishment is okay. I have to raise this because some of the scientists they think that what they want to do is abolish punishment. The very idea of punishment is always wrong. And no, no, no. I was in fact, notorious for saying in an earlier book, I don't want to live in a world without punishment.

[00:45:38] Host Create clip Oh, you evil retributive Manu, I said, Well, I don't want to live in a world without promises and you can't really have promises unless you have punishment. So here's the rationale. You're an intentional system that is, You have an agent with beliefs and desires, and some desires are stronger than others. And law is an artifact that takes advantage of this by yoking, you're strongest desires, the desire to live, to avoid paying, to keep your wealth to be free. And it turns us into constraints and those constraints of the conditions of civilization. These are what make for most of us, acting against these laws unthinkable all but unthinkable because we're motivated so motivated. No, back to the specs for morally competent agent. We've gotta look at the killer at the end. There could have done otherwise, which, on its face, seems to suggest a denial of determinism. So does could have done otherwise mean what tradition claims, namely the denial of determinism. No, it doesn't. What it means is what it has to mean to play the role that it plays in our social practice of holding people responsible.

[00:47:01] Host Create clip So we'll look at that and see how that comes out there. It is a matter of assessing self control competence. So let's see. I want to use an example. I'm going to choose a new example made famous by the foot late philosopher Jael Austin. I've written about this several times. Austin, in a famous footnote, gives this example. He talks about a putt. This is Austin's putt and he says, Consider the case where I miss a very short putt and kick myself because I could have hold it. It's not that I should hold it. If I tried, I did try and missed. It's not that I should have hold it if conditions had been different. That might of course, be so. But I'm talking about conditions as they precisely were and asserting that I could have hold it. There is the rub. You know. He's an ox phony in an Englishman. That's why uses should hear whether where we would use wood. Okay, the craziness that matters it is this one. I'm talking about conditions as they precisely were.

[00:48:10] Host Create clip Now he goes on, nor does. I can hold it this time mean that I shall hold it this time if I try or if anything else, where I may try and miss and yet would not be convinced that I could not have done it. Indeed, he goes on to say further experiments may confirm my belief that I could have done it that time, although I did not. Okay, I want to talk about those further experiments. Remember, I'll go back a couple of slides, he said. I'm talking about conditions as they precisely were. And then he's saying that further experiments could shed light on this. Good. Confirm his belief. So here's some further experience. You tell me what you think of these experiments in the first experiment, he says, I could have made it. And his partner says, I don't think so. Says Oh, really? Watch this. I'll show you approve it. He takes out a box of matches, lights 10 in a row, throws him on the So So what's that all about? Indeed.

[00:49:12] Host Create clip Okay, so he does some different experiments. He lines up 10 different putts about the same decision. He gets nine out of 10 of them and his opponent says, Wait a minute, you said conditions as they precisely were. They weren't the same. It was a little bit later. The sun was a little lower in the sky. The humidity was difference. The grass was a little bit drier. The balls were it wasn't the same ball. You were a little bit more tired. You have a completely different mindset. No, the conditions were never the same as they were precisely on that occasion. Do these experiments confirm that you could have made it? I say, Yeah, they do. But only if we deny straws is claim that what mattered was present conditions precisely as they were. That was simply irrelevant. If holding conditions precisely as they were was a requirement for testing could have done otherwise. The putting experiments would be no more relevant than the match striking experiments. But clearly they are. The putting Experiments are relevant because they measure competence, not by creating exactly the same condition but by actually by varying the conditions ever so slightly.

[00:50:32] Host Create clip That's the only way you can ever prove competence. And this requirement for measuring competence is the escape hatch from determinism as follows driving along, saying this car could go 70 miles per hour with conditions precisely as they are right now. Oh, no, no. I have to press down on the accelerator little harder. It's going 60 right now. In fact, it can go 50 right now, but I have to take my foot off the accelerator a little bit. You don't ever prove competence in any regard. Animate inanimate by looking at conditions, rewinding the tape of life and doing running exactly the same conditions through that souls. You? Nothing about the competence, especially the robustness of the competence of the agent in question. This car, I say, could have done otherwise. It could have gone 70. Could've gone 50. Another car maybe would not be able to go 70. It's an old clunker. No. 70 is it Stop. No matter how hard I press on the cellar, it's never going to go 70. The difference. Incompetence is what you measure by slightly adjusting. The conditions, in fact, were never interested in whether ex con do why, in precisely the same circumstances. The very closet Austin insisted on is in fact, a mistake.

[00:52:02] Host Create clip That's not what you use when you want to know whether somebody could have done otherwise or when a car could have done otherwise when anything could have done otherwise. Simply irrelevant to the issue, which is important, morally important. And that is moral competence. Like all artifacts, law is a compromise in a cost benefit calculation. It's a practical solution to a problem. We came up with this wonderful idea. The Moral Agent Club. Great benefits, but you have to live by the rules. The benefits are security, reliability, trust promising the security of R and R and the ability, the political ability to do what we want. Membership. Now some folks really are wired wrong. The retardation or brain damaged or dementia and cognitive neuroscience can help us sort out who those are, who are wired wrong and who those are, who are wired right. The ones who were wired wrong are morally incompetent through no fault of their own. The rest of us are competent. Lucky us. There are some very deep problem cases. Psycho psychopathy is one of the most interesting and important and difficult of those.

[00:53:27] Host Create clip Adrian Raine wrote a very good book on this last about a year ago, called The Anatomy of Violence. There's a review of it on my website appeared in Prospect magazine. No time to go into it here. Is it fair to exclude? Some is ineligible? Well, you know, we were exclude children. You say they're not morally responsible yet. They're going to grow in a moral responsibility. We don't hold them fully morally responsible till you're up a bit. We understand them to grow into moral responsibility, and there's no bright line. Some children are morally responsible, A 12 and others air not really eligible at 18. When you become responsible, you become punishable when you can't jettison that from the requirements. Prison society puts parents on notice. If you spoil your children in either direction, either by being too lenient or being too, too hard on them, they will suffers adults because they will be held responsible. Listen, itself is a strong motivation to parents to give their children immoral education to give them a moral upbringing, because parents care about the fact that society was gonna hold their children responsible unless they're seriously disabled.

[00:54:57] Host Create clip So pay up, quit the club. Is it fair? To those who are declared eligible but found to have violated the rules here I want to use another toy problem to make it make clear what I think The answer's consider punishment in sports. Is it fair to give a red card in soccer? Is it fair to put a hockey player in the penalty box? I submit that those who think that science has shown that we have no free will among their targets should be abolishing all penalties from all sports because nobody ever deserves a penalty. These reforms of punishment. I don't think that would fly very well again. If you don't like, the rules don't play the game. The fact that Jan is morally responsible in Fran is not is a socially constituted fact. It's like the fact that the 350 foot fly ball can be a home run and a 349 foot home run. Ah, fly ball isn't out. Yes, the line is arbitrary, but we draw it. We've agreed to play the game, and that's the way that's the way we're gonna. We're gonna have to implement our understanding.

[00:56:17] Host Create clip The home run rule is fair because it's been negotiated by the likely participants. If you don't like it, don't play baseball, and similarly, you can live like a hermit if you really don't want to be part of society. But you forgo the benefits, our punishment system. Let me hasten to say, I think our current punishment system in this country is obscene. It's ineffective, It's indefensible. So I agree with the scientists that there's something rotten there. But I say Fix it, Don't jettison it again. I don't want to live in a world without punishment. We want to tune the punishment system. The goal is to preserve its credibility while minimizing suffering. Ideally, you'd like people to think Well, if I get caught, I'll be punished with the probability close to one. That's, of course, never the case with him. There's a trade offs here that we can look at some agents, turns out, are simply under terrible. They're grossly under terrible children and idiots and people with a gun in their back and others. And so we excuse them, but the others we hold responsible and we don't look too closely.

[00:57:33] Host Create clip It's like the driving age this matter. How mature you are is a 15 year old or a 14 year old. You don't get to take the driving test. Now there's an arms race that I think we can understand. It's It's ah. Others try to exploit the loopholes in the law. And so we revise the laws. As we learn more excusing conditions, we revise the loss again. This is where cognitive neuroscience and carted of science can help us guide to better legislation about who's responsible agent and who not. What about toxic upbringing, something Some people bring their something. It's very important. And of course it is. But it's not obvious what we should do about it. Um, what about what I've called the threat of creeping exculpation? The more we learn about how people's brains work, the more we'll see that nobody's ever really responsible. We will just excuse an excuse. An excuse, an excuse the more we learn. Is that a real problem? I don't think so. Not for a scientific reason or for a metaphysical reason, but for a political reason is a powerful force on the other side.

[00:58:47] Host Create clip The rights and privileges of citizenship this way, we politically enforce a boundary between those who were responsible knows we're not, You know, I'm a philosopher, were notoriously absent minded. Suppose I get caught speeding and the officer pulls me over and I say to him, Look, I'm a philosopher. My head was in the clouds. I I just can't really concentrate on these mundane questions about the limit. He says, Okay, give me your license will take you off the road. You're clearly not qualified. No, no, no, I said, I'll pay the fine. Why? Because I want the freedom to get in the car and drive on the highway. The last thing I want to do is to be cleared a non member of the Moral Agents Club because of a deficit in my reasoning ability, I'm quite prepared. There's a there's a payoff here. It's a pack tickle, not a metaphysical boundary. Um, these are all art. If actual distinctions that we have agreed to play by, it's a good deal for almost everybody, and we're constantly trying to improve it.

[01:00:10] Host Create clip Does that really so? Yeah, I'll show you how How many of you know about the marshmallow effect way? Back in the seventies, the psychologist Walter Michelle did some important experiments with marshmallows. He had little kids age, I think, 3 to 5, roughly that, and he put him in a room and he put down a marshmallow on the table, and then he'd walk out before he walked out. He said, If you can go 15 minutes without eating that marshmallow, I'll give you a second marshmallow. Well, imagine what those kids did, By the way, delicious video exists on the YouTube. You can you can watch it from his from his old films and the kids try all sorts of things. They get up and they walk around and they hold their hands and they they mumble. And about 1/3 of them Ah, about 1/3 of them get the second marshmallow. 1/3 took the first Micro right away, and the rest is sort of the painful group. They hang on for a while, but but they succumb before the time limits up.

[01:01:16] Host Create clip It's really quite heartrending to wash this, okay, but now here's the bad news. That was way back in the seventies. These people, these young kiddos, have have been tracked through their lives now for 40 years, and the bad news is that those who took the virus mellow very significantly unwanted pregnancies. Trouble with the law, delinquency, drug addiction, you name it, the whole panoply of bad effects. Stunning. That's the bad news. The good news is that there are non invasive training methods to make the effect go away. Eyeglasses for the mind and effect. As cognitive science learns more and more as it becomes able to predict effects like this, it can also devise ways of helping people get across that threshold so that they could be members of the Moral Agent Club. That is a very valuable service that cognitive science can play. So some scientists wanted jettison the concept of moral responsibility. I think they're not thinking clearly. They don't want us to abandon promising. They just want to abandon punishment. And I don't think that makes sense.

[01:02:47] Host Create clip They want us to abandon retributive punishment. They don't distinguish that from defensible punishment. Some of you may remember a book by Carl Manager back in 1968 called The Crime of Punishment. He advocated medicalizing all all response to antisocial a social anti social behavior. Grim idea, actually. Ah, not an inspiring book. Just think about what they did to people in the U. S. S r. O. We're not punishing. You were treating you treatment. How many of you would rather be punished? Untreated may health. So the Moral Agents Club. I'm happy to be a member of the Moral Agents Club. I'm lucky to be a member, but I do take steps to preserve my membership in good standing. I think we need to reform its practices significantly. And meanwhile, it's the best deal in time. Thank you for your attention. Now, uh, questions, challenges, objections? Yes, sir. Here. No. Okay, Well, I addressed a few already social constructs, and I think it's important to realize it.

[01:04:47] Host Create clip Social constructs I really do change the environment. They are They're real. Ah, uh, societies are not the state of nature and in our own minds, in our own psychology, in our personal individual psychology, you are a lot of constructs. I've just ah headed ah, Working group up up sf eye on cultural evolution Where we've been looking at the way cultures evolve to create boy, do they create structures that help us to think and help us to be moral agency and help us tow invent things. And these air these air constructs and the self itself is a construct. Um none the worse for that. Um, if it weren't for those constructs, the pieces of the little metal discs in your pocket would wouldn't be worth anything. Ah, if it weren't for constructs, you wouldn't be able to think about all sorts of things that you think about. It's good stuff. Constructs? Yes. On the up there. Yes, right. We thank you. I I have a copy of it. No.

[01:06:52] Host Create clip Oh, I tell you what. I'm gonna put it in my stack of books that people have written about free will recently. And I'll get to it. Maybe someday. It's quite a big stack. Well, yes, yes. What? What about it? I mean, what about the culture? Yes. What about the culture of poverty I presented? My talk has been, as it were, even quite culturally specific. Very western. Very, very Western industrialized. And what about about other cultures? Um, very good question. A very important question. What about the culture of poverty? Uh, what I know about this at from an amateur way from reading the work of anthropologists and others. Ah, they have much the same set of rules. Some of them have less Ah, less emphasis on on personal responsibility. sometimes even you get ah, remarkable societies Where, um you know, if my brother kill somebody, I Mrs responsible as he is, um I'm not Ah, complete cultural relativist. I think there are better and worse constructions.

[01:08:36] Host Create clip I I'm quite prepared. Two ah, consider adopting significant revisions to our cultural constructions of responsibility. I think we would be a lot better off if we and this is an idea of the philosopher Alan Gilbert. If we turn the volume down on guilt on, uh, made a few other adjustments in the way we consider individuals, I wouldn't, ah, abandoned the idea moral responsibility or for that matter, for you will. But I would certainly moderate them. I think there is a lot of truth to the objection coming from some of the scientists and philosophers that our traditional ideas of free will, uh, the sort of mystical ideas of free will license a sort of cruel vindictiveness that is out of place and that we would do well to get rid of it. Yes, over here. All right. She's wants to know what basically what the practical or political end? We're where we Where would I go from here? Ah, would I want to change the laws? Would I? How would I want to spread this around the globe? And moreover, you're suggesting that are our choices are in fact, more limited? Ah, by our environment. Then then we perhaps think, Well, I freed. There's on this last point. There's a lot of very interesting research which shows how valuable it is to have limited choices. There is there is the affliction, the being overpowered by too many choices, which makes us reason rather badly. And this has been an interesting topic of research by psychologists and others recently, including Look, looking at how animals respond to, ah, an over abundance of choices.

[01:11:22] Host Create clip I don't I don't think in other words, I think you're right that our environments structure and limit our choices to somebody. I think that's true and important observation, but I don't think it is a problem. I think it is something. It is a fact to address in our thinking on these topics, but it's nothing that rules out maintaining an idea of free and responsible choice. Um, I don't think we have to change a lot of laws. We should certainly change our whole system of punishment. It is, as I say, obscene. But I don't mean think that means that we should. We should limit punishment or or or abandoned the concept of moral responsibility. I think that is, Ah, social political project, which I do hope goes forward. And I just want I want the neuroscientists to put their shoulder to the wheel in a way that's helpful and not in a way, which is, I think, very unimaginative. That's true. There's many anomalies of that sort. Uh, but that's part of the wonderfulness of life. Let me come over and get somebody yes with, uh, yeah, I certainly have.

[01:13:09] Host Create clip And I think, uh, religion has nothing to do with it. Um, I think at his best, religion often makes some people more moral than they otherwise would be. But I don't think that any of the precepts of morality I don't think any of our understanding of the difference between good and bad is due to any religious, any particular religious doctrine. The old age old question is the philosopher spilled a lot of in Connie's, you know, does God command something because it's good, or is it good because God commands it, Um, I think the latter is, well, the preposterous idea. You tell me I shouldn't do X because God says that's prohibited. My answer to that is, Who's God, I mean, and why do you think that God has any authority over this? It's a rude answer. But then, in a way, it's a rude assertion in the first place. I've had fun, actually, when the topic is religion because you may know I've written quite a bit about religion recently.

[01:14:24] Host Create clip And sometimes I've been interviewed by right wing Christian radio programs and, uh, who take all of that for granted. And I got in the habit of saying, Lucille says, You're wrong. You say what I said Lucille says, You're wrong. Hey, who's Lucy? I said, It's a friend of my She's always right. Now. That's rude. But so is what they say. And it has no place in a reasonable discussion here. No, no, Dude, could everybody hear that? Okay, well, let me also How does science to find the difference between will and understanding Where the boundary between them and how did they get put together? Uh, that will I do. Okay, um, that's a good question, and part of the answer is to acknowledge a little bit of embarrassment. I think Kyla of Science, until quite recently was very obsessed with looking at the inbound path. Looking of perception and memory and judgment on discrimination and very little attention was played to volition, control, action planning and things like that. This is changing. I'm happy to say there are. There's some very clever and serious groups around the world that air working a lot on voluntary action, and it will, if you want to call it that.

[01:16:43] Host Create clip Will and understanding are, uh, traditional terms that some, to some people, seem to mean separate faculties of the mind. That's that's sort of obsolete. We now understand that there's a riel interaction, lots of feedback and interaction effects between between understanding or comprehension, discrimination and the control of action. And this is coming out in interesting ways. And people are also now finally deciding that emotion is not just a a source of noise in these models but is actually playing a very crucial role. And so models of decision making, which at the neural at the neuro scientific level R, looking at neural modulator balances and sort of the tugs of war that go on between different systems of neuro modulators and the temporal dynamics of that. That's all very important work, I think. Well, well, well, no. But here's something that's close Agent Nolan and is one of the pioneers in this neuroscientist. There's a condition called locked in Syndrome, which is, thankfully rare, but it's really dramatic in that a person can be completely conscious, wide awake and unable to move any voluntary muscle.

[01:18:26] Host Create clip And there they seem to be comatose. They aren't. Uh this is as you can if you think about it, but a terrifying condition to be in, but now tests their device so we can identify it. And of course, it can also be used to show. But people are not in that state. When you might wish they were, I mean, no, I mean to remind you of a not so far in the past obscenity the Terri Shiavo case, where people who knew nothing about the science we're imposing their judgment in really horrendous and cruel ways. We can distinguish these, and we shouldn't let legislators or family members think that they know better than what the science shows. Yes. What? Yeah, yeah, yeah. There, there, there, there, games and training exercises. And they're just sort of mild compensatory exposures of the children to situations where they can sort of strengthen their their their self control. There's a literature on it. I'm not an expert on it, but if you go looking for it, you'll find it quite readily on the Web.

[01:20:05] Host Create clip But you're good question one more than way. Oh, yes. Back there. You. Oh, well, no, thank you for asking that question, because you notice that, um, I've given you the answer. They're not punishable. So they're not moral agents. They're not responsible. The people that are running them are. So we we've got to find those that have skin in the game and hold them responsible. That's a too short and answer, But But it will have to do because it's ah, it's a longer and more complicated issue. But But I think the resources, in my view, are there to say why we shouldn't just consider them responsible. I think that's a good note to end on. Thank you.