Home
Creators
Search Recent Random
Posts
Search DMs Popular Hash Lookup Tags Random
Importer
Import FAQ
Register Favorites Keys Review DMs Logout
Community
Telegram ThePornDude
Home Creators Posts Import Register Favorites Logout

Interview with Kevin Mitchell on Agency, Evolution, and Freewill (Patreon)

Published:
2024-02-22 23:39:10
Imported:
2026-06
Tags:

Content

Here is the video version of the interview we recorded with the neuroscientist Kevin Mitchell. We are still doing final checks so if you notice any issues please let us know and we will try to resolve before we release

Files

Interview with Kevin Mitchell on Agency, Evolution, and Free Will

Comments

Randy

I enjoyed the conversation. I haven't read Mitchell's book, but based on the little bit of free will talk in this episode, I think I would strongly disagree with his position. Also, my Templeton sensors started ringing about halfway in. I don't know if he's religious, but I started getting the impression he was trying to establish a crack for a higher power to sneak in. Apologies if I'm way off, there.

Robert Andrews

Not finished this talk yet, but I was wondering if Mitchell's free will argument was similar to that of Daniel Dennett's?

Dean

This is easily one of my favourite bits of DTG content. Kevin's areas of discussion are fascinating. Nice job fellas.

Dean

I'm on my 3rd listen to this as it's just a fantastic discussion. I can't help but think Kevin is fundamentally making the same "randomness is a part of the mechanism" kinda argument with regards to free will and determinism. @27:20 Kevin overspeaks about quantum uncertainty. His points about the Heisenberg uncertainty principal and quantum determinism are over reaching. We have no true understanding to the full causal mechanism that results in quantum behaviours, just very useful mathematical tools and models that calculate and predict quantum effects probabilisticly to a level of accuracy. At a fundamental level, an appeal to "randomness" as part of a primary causal mechanism is as useless as appealing to magic or a God entity. For example, had we evolved here a few billion years into the future, the expansion of space in between the stars and galaxy's would be such that at some point, we would loose access to the sensory information we need to confirm hypothesis or learn certain things about the nature of how the universe is. There could be layers of mechanistic happenings in ways that, because of our vantage point in 3 dimensional spacetime, it might not even be possible to ever interact or detect as the time frame of the universe has progressed passed a certain threshold of cooling or expansion or whatever. Maybe there's something I'm missing but to me it seems Kevin is basing his position partly on this assumption.

MaxPlan

This was not what I signed up for, philosophical discussions? I want to be told about the juicy details of the next guru drama. I did find it very interesting thought, I do have one question, during the interview, Kevin made a point that we tend to think of causation going from the lower levels like atoms, and quantum waves to higher levels like people and concepts and such. Chris asked him to explain more the evidence for that, but he didn't really answer the question. He just mentioned that we see a lot of evidence that determinism is not the paradigm of the universe, like from quantum mechanics or even in classical physics chaotic systems. First that is wrong, chaotic systems are entirely deterministic, if you set the initial state the same, the system will evolve into the exact same configuration. The problem is setting the initial system to the exact state as before, even small variations of the initial system can lead to very different outcomes. Second, that doesn't answer the question, you can have a non deterministic system, how does that imply that causation can come from the upper levels of abstraction. Did I misunderstand something during this discussion?

Jonathan Cano

@Matt - I am 100% on team "does freewill exist" being a mostly useless question. Also, I like the guest's view on evolution but his take on freewill is nonsense. OTOH, freewill is somewhat nonsense so I guess that is par for the course. Internet dummy take: In physics 'centrifigual force' is an imaginary force - it is the inertial reaction to centripital force. imaginary forces can still be useful in the appropriate frame of reference. Free will is just as imaginary but is very useful in appropriate frames of reference (i.e. Dennett and the compatibilists are right).