Plato's Dialogues Phaedo, Introduction to Plato's Phaedo; Arguments for the existence of the soul, Part II
We have been discussing the question of what argument to use to prove the existence of the soul, and the first type of argument that comes to mind is the kind of argument called reasoning, or "best explanatory reasoning," in which there is something about ourselves that needs to be explained, but from a physical point of view alone, we cannot explain it, so we need to use other methods, we need to assume that the soul exists. We'll come back to this topic later, and for now we'll put it aside for a moment and start studying Plato, starting next week.
Although, when I speak of Phaedo, I will give you a detailed introduction to its contents and give you a short introduction, I do not know how many of you have not read Plato's works before. But, my classmates who have not yet read Plato, I'm sure you'll like him.
Plato is one of the greatest philosophers in history, that is, in the form of drama, in which various characters sit or stand leisurely, gather together, and discuss various philosophical points, and the dialogue we want to study, "Phaedo", sets the scene before Socrates' death, Presumably you all know that Socrates was accused of being sentenced to death for the crime of instigating the athenian youth, and discussed philosophy with the youth, and the jailer gave him the parsley juice, he drank it, and then his life ended. This is a historic event.
Socrates had a large group of friends and students with whom he discussed philosophy, and Plato was one of his students, Plato then formed his own ideas and wrote many philosophical works, Plato himself usually does not appear in his own dialogues, and even if he does, he is only a secondary role.
In fact, if I remember correctly, Plato mentioned that Socrates himself was not present at the time of his death, so how can we discern who in the play represents plato himself?
The answer is: Socrates. That is, the role of Socrates in the play interprets the philosophical views of the writer of the play, if this is in the ancient philosophical classroom, we may want to extend the discussion a little more broadly, because Plato's later philosophical views are very different from the views of his teacher Socrates, and Plato has not appeared in the dialogue, and Socrates continues to maintain the identity of the protagonist, so scholars have been arguing, in the dialogue of Socrates's point of view, Which belong to the real Socrates in history? Which are Socrates in the play? Although they are said to be Socrates' views in the dialogue, they do not correspond to the original meaning of the real Socrates. That is, in fact, Plato used socrates to express his point of view, which scholars have identified, Plato's early dialogue works, that is, in the so-called dialogues of Socrates, the protagonist Socrates' views coincide with the ideas of the real Socrates in history, and in the case of Plato's late dialogues, although Socrates also appears frequently.
Most scholars believe that those views are likely to be held by the real Socrates, and that it is more difficult to identify the works of the mid-term dialogue. Because you can't define the correspondence between the point of view and the character, but we don't have to worry, it's not in the ancient philosophy class. So, for the purposes of this course, we don't need to delve into whether one of Socrates' ideas in the dialogue belonged to the real dead man, Socrates. Or does it belong to the late Plato?
As expressed by the character of Socrates in the work, it does not matter as far as the purpose of our course is concerned, and I will take all the ideas put forward by Socrates as Plato's, although I will casually alternate the two, and I will say: "Plato thinks" or "Socrates thinks", because for the purposes of this course the two statements are equivalent.
But there is another place, I want to remind you: that is, since these are works of dialogue, and they all take the form of philosophical arguments, that is, people first put forward their opinions, and then in the process of discussion, they change their ideas about things and then take back what they have said. Perhaps a similar situation happened to Socrates, for, after all, Plato did not say it, and this is the point which I clearly believe, that he is simply writing a drama about philosophy. So sometimes we think, look, there's an argument here, made by Socrates, and it may not be a good argument, but at least it's worth our occasional pauses and ponders.
Perhaps Plato also realized that this was not a good argument, and by understanding the views made by Socrates, but which he himself felt were inadequate, we could better understand these works of dialogue, and he would adjust and revise those views, or introduce new ideas to solve the problems he had previously encountered, I said before, do not stick too much to the details, but when reading the dialogue, we should bear in mind that the details are important, and the above is my introduction to Phaedo.
Considering next week's lesson, you should start reading Phaedo in advance, and we will start discussing Phaedo next week, plus part of next week, or all of the time, to continue to discuss Phaedo, and I will make a special treatment for Plato. Usually, I will mention our reading material, but I will not spend too much time discussing the details, which is why you have to use after-school reading as a supplement to the class, or to the lecture as a supplement to the after-class reading, this time it is not as simple as sending you some famous book introductions, and I will spend more time explaining for Phaedo, for example, I think the first argument is this: Let's start with the premise and conclusion, reconstruct this argument, these are some of my rebuttal points.
Then there is another argument put forward by Plato, and we will try to study the prerequisites, and even then I will not take the time to read the major texts of Phaedo aloud, but in a sense I will explain the Phaedo in more detail than the other reading materials, and for the sake of next week's lesson you should start reading the subject of Phaedo. As mentioned earlier, it is set on the day of Socrates' death, and at the end of the dialogue, he drinks poisonous celery juice and goes to death. Perhaps, not surprisingly, until the last moment of his life, he was discussing the immortality of the soul with his friends.
Most amazingly, Socrates was not distressed, he did not worry at all about his imminent death, but instead somehow welcomed the coming of death, because he firmly believed that the soul was immortal. So, the argument for and against the existence and immortality of the soul ends in a touching and profound death scene, which is simply one of the greatest death scenes in the history of Western civilization.
If we can say so, in short, as I said before, that is the arrangement for next week, now let's return to the question of how we argue for the existence of the soul.
At first, in the last lesson, we explored a class or a small class of arguments, the basic idea of which is that we must not be just material entities, people, not machines, because machines can't reason, machines can't think, and I said that this doesn't seem like a convincing argument. After all, chess-playing computers seem to reason, they know my tactics, they have the desire to achieve their goals, and they figure out how to defeat me most completely. It should be noted that I did not mention this in the last lesson, it should be pointed out that computers are at least the best chess computers, and they do not do anything, in fact, no computer actually does these things. You might think that this is what a computer or a chess computer does, calculating all the possible moves, and the various possible games that correspond to them, and then it does a little more. Well, I can win in these situations, so it will only go down if it can foresee the way it will win the next 20 moves.
But chess programs don't work that way, for the simple reason that the potential variables of a chess game are so large that a computer simply can't fully calculate them, because it takes thousands of years of work for them, and we might do that, and when you play backgammon with your seven-year-old nephew or niece, you predict first, and then think, if I play like that, he'll play like that, and if he takes that step, then he wins, so I'm not going to take that step, right?
But we don't do that when we play chess, because there are so many chess games, so how does the chess program, especially the best chess program, work?
They play chess the same way as you, and they wonder, which pieces are more powerful? Need priority shelter? Which strategy do they think about, a higher chance of winning, and what risks do they pose?
If you're a serious chess player, you'll probably also study the greatest games in the history of chess, and indeed, when people program games, they'll feed the greatest games in history game after game, and then, arming yourself with that knowledge, you'll be the best you can do. When you lose a set, you may mentally write down, this time is really bad, next time you try to change something else, you will try to avoid using those numbers, chess program also works in this way.
Jumping on the subject, I'll comment on that first, because it's about what we're going to be talking about in a few minutes, so what does that mean?
The implication is that if you are playing a good chess program, if you want to guess the next move of the program, and the comprehensive study of the game program, it seems that it is not an effective method, the designers of these programs, it is likely that they are highly skilled, they play this program game, they will not think in their minds, since this program is prepared by me. So, if I move the queen here, it will come out of phase, and this idea is useless at all, because the program will constantly modify its strategy based on the past, effective and invalid experience, when the programmer or anyone else, plays the program. For example, a good chess player, when playing these programs, the best way to beat them is to ask yourself, what is the wisest way to go now? Estimating the most likely future movement of the computer is the key to victory, and the computer is regarded as a chess player. In fact, the best chess program is already a veteran chess player, and although there was a time when a strong chess program could not beat the top human players, that situation ended a few years ago when the chess program defeated the chess master. Now, the best chess program can be called invincible, and the current chess world champion, Vladimir Kramnik, was defeated by a chess program in December this year, and Kramnik only regarded it as a strong opponent, and what he did was the best way to play chess.
Okay, let's put these thoughts aside for a moment and discuss them later, and when we start to explore the question, do machines have the ability to create?
I first revealed my own point of view, and it was obvious that this question was just an explanation for chess programs, so we asked: Can machines reason?
Machines with reasoning abilities, this is quite clear, but it seems natural that machines have reasoning abilities in some areas. Therefore, the idea that man is not a physical object does not seem to stand firm, because after all, we humans can reason and machines cannot.
No, machines can reason.
But this leads to a very different process for the apologists of the soul, and perhaps the argument should not be that we must believe in the soul, because all physical objects cannot be reasoned, but that we should have to believe in the soul. Because all physical objects, all machines have no feelings, we humans have emotions, we love each other, we have fear, we have troubles, we will rejoice, we will be depressed, so perhaps this argument should be expressed like this: Yes, thinking, machines can think, we call it thinking machines. But the ability to feel is something that no machine has, there is no pure physical object, what can be felt, there can be emotions, because we have the ability to feel things, so we must be higher than physical objects.
Now, I think it's reasonable to think that, unlike the chess computer example, we don't have a machine that can sense things right now. But the question is not whether we have such a machine, but whether such a machine can exist? It can feel something, it can have a certain emotion, let's talk about a little science fiction, think about it, some robots that have appeared in science fiction movies, some computer programs that have appeared in science fiction movies and other science fiction works such as science fiction, I had a TV series called "Lost in Space" when I was a child, I can't remember the name of the robot in the play, but in this TV show, every episode will dramatically have a new crisis, so the robot will start to go full speed, shouting "danger, Commander Robinson," "Danger, Will Robinson," and that's the "Danger, Will Robinson," and the robot seems to be worried all the time. To take a more recent example, you may have read Douglas Adams's books, such as The Guide to the Galaxy and its sequel, there is a robot named Marvin, I think you can use the word "negative" to summarize his characteristics, he is very intelligent, he has his own thinking about everything in the universe, he thinks that life is meaningless, so he acts negatively, he tells his thoughts to another robot, the latter's mood also becomes depressed, and finally commits suicide, and the story ends here.
"Negative" applied to robots seems to be very natural, because his words and deeds are like this, and then to give my favorite example, 2001 Space Odyssey (movie title), I first stated that I have not seen this movie students, I want to spoil, ok, so please cover your ears, space odyssey, some indications that there is life on another planet, everything is mysterious, so we sent a spaceship to investigate the imprints on the planet, and those radio signals from other planets, This is a very important task. Therefore, a computer program named Hal was arranged to assist in the operation of the spacecraft and reduce the burden on the human astronauts on the spacecraft, Hal had a goal, from the perspective of reason and desire, Hal's goal was to ensure that the mission could be successfully completed, but Hal seemed to have a well-founded belief that humans would only threaten the execution of the mission, which was a crucial task, to eliminate humans to ensure the smooth execution of the mission. One of the astronauts discovers its plot and tries to stop Hal, and the only thing he can do so that Hal doesn't hurt himself is to shut down the program, essentially killing. Meanwhile, everything is in progress, Hal talks to the human astronaut named Dave, who finally realizes what's going to happen and tries to stop Dave, which is perfectly understandable, and when Dave starts turning off its circuits, Hal says, "I'm scared, I'm scared, Dave."
What was he afraid of? He is afraid of death, giving Hal a sense of fear, which also seems natural, and Hal accurately shows the way you expect him, or call it, to behave in a way that is supposed to behave, and if it does feel fear, it has reason to be afraid, it behaves appropriately, it tells us that it is afraid, so naturally, we say Hal is afraid.
Now, you can go on to add examples of this, and as I said, it's true that these are just science fiction works, but we can still learn something from it, and we're not going to just walk away and say, "Oh no, that's incredible, right?" The computer will say: I'm afraid, it simply doesn't make sense, it will have other actions like trying to kill the person who is going to close the program, which doesn't make sense at all.
The above idea seems to me to be a bias, as I said last time, here people can naturally say that these computer programs, these robots can feel emotions, but there is no reason to believe that there is something else outside the circuit in operation, they are just some physical objects, just some machine programs, if this is correct, if this statement is correct, then, we have to say that we do not need to appeal to the soul to explain emotions and feelings, physical objects can have pure, Physical objects can have emotions and sensations, so there is no reason to assume that souls exist.
Now, I think the best response of the dualists to this answer is to distinguish between the two aspects of feelings, the two aspects of emotions, for example, the behavioral aspect of feeling fear, the behavioral aspect is when you realize that something in your environment poses a danger to you, it will hurt or destroy you, or turn you off in the case of this computer program, so you take various counter-actions to remove the danger, to counteract its negative effects, beliefs, goals, countermeasures, plans, and so on. Chess computers have been able to do these behavioral aspects of emotion, and it seems perfectly natural to think that robots can do this, and physical objects can do this.
But the key point of this rebuttal is that there is another side to emotions and feelings, the perception of sensations, which is why we end up calling them feelings, i.e. inner sensations that happen at the same time as all these behavioral-level things, and when I'm afraid, I have some sort of wet and cold feeling, or, my heart pounds and the blood rushes, and when you're afraid, you have a feeling of sinking in the stomach, and when you're depressed, there are those feelings that we can call experiences.
Although the word "experience" is also vague, so let's call it that for the time being, every emotion that comes, produces an experience, and when you are afraid, there is an experience of fear. When you worry, you have disturbing experiences, or frustration, or pleasure, or falling in love, and such an idea that seems to me to be very influential is that even if robots show a behavioral level, they do not have a sensory surface, and when you start to have these thoughts, you will find that not only emotions, but all kinds of deficiencies, are going on in such a familiar monotonous routine. For example, I'm staring at the chairs in the audience right now, they're blue, think about it, look at other parts of the classroom, like the curtains are red, think about it, what does it feel like to see red, what is the perception of red?
Now, let's discern, what I call the behavioral aspect of seeing red, and the experience of seeing red, it's easy to think of making a machine that can tell red and blue, and as long as it can detect the frequency of light reflected by an object, we can make a machine that can distinguish between red and blue balls, and one of my son's toy robots has this function.
However, we can think about what is inside the machine? How does the machine feel when it looks at the red ball with its electronic eyes? Does it have the perception of seeing red? I think you'd say, and of course I want to say, no, it doesn't have that perception at all, it just distinguishes colors based on the frequency of light, and it doesn't have the experience of seeing red.
What I'm trying to say may be very obscure, but I'm sure most of you are no stranger to it, and sometimes you ask yourself questions about whether someone is born blind, might he know what it's like to see colors? He may be a scientist who knows the principles of light, knows how much and how much frequency of light you use, and what objects are there? Then you hand him an apple and he says, "Oh, it's a very red apple, isn't it?" He might point a light detector at an apple, the instrument displays the measurement results, and the data shows, how much and how often is this light? Then he would say, "Oh, this apple is super red, redder than a tomato, and so on."
Even so, we think that not only could he not see the red, he could not even imagine what it was like to see the red, because he had never had a similar experience. Once we understand this, we will find that life is full of this experience, the color of things, the sound of things, the smell of things, the qualitative aspects of experience, I mentioned before about the view of the inner aspects of emotions, emotions are not only external, but also internal, we can feel specific inner feelings, typical such as fear, pleasure, depression and so on.
Well, so one possible answer is this, physical objects can't feel, what a qualitative experience of things is like, because they can't feel at all, this is the aspect we want to grasp when we ask ourselves, what it feels like to see red, what it feels like to smell coffee and taste pineapple, philosophers sometimes call these "receptivity", because they think: there is a qualitative concept of things, our experience includes qualitative characteristics, so one might say, there is no physical object, No machine can have a qualitative experience. But we have, so we're not just physical objects, we're not machines.
Well, that's a good rebuttal, and the next question is: How can the physicists respond?
The best answer that the physicists can now make is to understand in this sense that it is possible to build a conscious machine, that is, a machine that can have qualitative experiences, how it should be built, and then how, just as we can explain from the perspective of materialism, physicalism, how to get desires, beliefs, and behavioral things, we can also explain how to get feelings, qualitative feelings, and it would be very good if the physicists could give such an explanation.
I think, in fact, the current answer is that we cannot yet make that explanation, consciousness, and if we are talking about consciousness, which refers to the qualitative aspect of our mental activity, then consciousness is still a great mystery, and we do not know how to explain it from a physicalistic point of view, and for this reason I think we should not despise dualists, when they say that we can only explain this by believing in the soul, and we should not dismiss it, but it does not mean that we should be convinced of it. For it is one thing to not know how to explain consciousness from a physical point of view, and it is another thing to never be able to explain consciousness from a physical point of view.
If we belong to the latter, sorry, if we are bold, because no object can see red and taste honey, and we humans can do it, so we conclude from this that we are not objects, or not just objects, but I think it is too early to say that, a simple fact is that we know very little about consciousness and do not know whether we can explain it in a physical way, and whenever I think of this situation, I always think of an analogy, imagine, We are in the 14th century when people were trying to understand life, to understand the life of plants, a plant is a living entity, and we are asking ourselves if we can explain life from a material point of view?
This kind of thinking is simply unbelievable, how can it be?
When we think back to the various machines of the 14th century, I try to imagine what a person who lived in the 14th century, he or she, would think when confronted with the idea that a plant might be nothing more than a machine. Then we have some sort of plant made of gears in our minds, right? The gears began to turn, and then the buds bloomed, da, da, da, da, da, da So it is clear that machines cannot be vital, that material entities have no vitality, and that to explain life we have to resort to something other than atoms, which they did not know about at that time.
Merely above the material level, life needs to be explained by means of something immaterial, above and beyond matter, which may be an explanation that can be understood by people in the 14th century, but it may be wrong.
At that time, we did not yet know how to explain life from a material point of view, but that did not mean that we could never do it, and I tended to think that this law was the same, applicable to the present stage of explaining consciousness, and there must be some theories that could help us explain consciousness.
But I think we're in a situation similar to the 14th century, and we have no clue. Or rather, there's no way to get started. How do you start in this situation, we don't just don't know the details, we don't even have a general outline of thick lines on how to explain consciousness from a physical point of view, but at this stage we can't foresee its possibilities, which doesn't mean it will never be possible.
If it were a dualist, they would come up and say, Don't you think that the possibility of a purely physical object being able to have experience and sensibility is so slim that it is hard to even think about.
But what I'm trying to say is, no, I don't think that's impossible. I admit, I don't know how to explain it, but I don't think it's impossible, so I don't feel like I have to accept the assumption that the soul exists, of course, people who believe in the soul will come and say, it's not fair. The problem is not that this explanation is impossible, the problem is that you people have not been able to make any explanation at all, and I can explain, what is consciousness? We all have souls, souls and ordinary objects are very different, so they can produce consciousness, but for this, I think the most important thing is to remember: the question is not only who can explain, but also: whose explanation is more reasonable?
Before we can admit that the soul view is more reasonable, we must ask ourselves, how is this view explained? I can explain consciousness that consciousness does not come from the body, it comes from the soul.
Okay, so how exactly does the soul come to be conscious?
If we ask that, the soul theorist will say, "That, uh, uh, ah, it just can be produced."
This is not really an explanation, and I feel that even if I were a dualist, I would still not understand this explanation of consciousness. If the dualists try to provide us with an exhaustive theory of consciousness, you see, this is what structure of the soul, what structure of the soul, these give rise to this feeling, those give rise to that feeling, and here is a theory. Well, in that case I would seriously consider this explanation. But if all the soul theorists just say, no, no, no, you can't explain, but I can, because I think it's an explanation, then I just want to say that this kind of statement is meaningless, and that saying it is tantamount to saying nothing.
The question is: First of all, before this question he accuses me of applying double standards, saying that I am defending, and when I defend the physicists I will say, don't blame us, we don't know how to explain it, and why don't you allow the theory of the soul to say, don't blame us, we just don't know how to explain it yet.
It's a good question, and my answer is: Sometimes I think it's a draw, I think the soul theorists haven't been able to explain it, the physics theorists haven't been able to explain it, and as far as I can see, no one has yet been able to make a reasonable explanation for the principle of consciousness, and it's still an unsolved mystery. So I'm not saying, I wish I hadn't done it, it's not about any double standards, it's about equality.
But please note that if it is a draw, this still does not give the answer we want, after all, what we are looking for is to believe in the reason for the existence of the soul, if the soul theorist can only say, I can not explain, you can not, this is not a reason to believe in the existence of the soul, we already believe in the existence of the body, we already know that the body can do some rather magical things, our question is, is there a good reason for us to add a few more strokes to the list of things that have been written, If there is a good reason to add a non-material entity such as a soul, if the most sufficient reason for a soul is that maybe we need the soul to explain something that I don't think you can explain, maybe that would help, although I don't know how to explain it with the soul, this is not a very convincing argument.
So I tend to think that we can't make up our minds about this particular dilemma, or to put it that way, about this particular version of the argument, and maybe eventually, after we've done our best, we'll decide that we can't explain consciousness from a physical point of view, that we'll find some other theory of immateriality, and maybe eventually we'll conclude that we need to believe in the soul. But at this point, I don't think there is evidence to support the conclusion that this soul exists. Of course, there are other possibilities, such as creativity, which is an argument that develops from reasoning to another way of explaining, creativity, which is that people are creative, we compose music, we create poetry, we use mathematics to prove things that have never been proven, we explore new ways to prove those theorems, or whatever, in short, we are creative, pure machines are not creative.
So surely we're not just machines, so the question then turns to whether there is a situation in which physical objects are also creative?
I tend to think that there is. In fact, when I talk about playing chess computers, I have hinted many times that chess programs will think about how to play, will come up with strategies that no one has ever thought of, in the most direct and natural sense of understanding, we have to say, I think the computer program that beat the world champion is called Deep Fritz, when Deep Fritz defeated Kramnick, it was creative, it came out of The Cramnick did not expect, perhaps no one thought of a move, this may be an unprecedented move in the history of chess.
In addition to playing chess, computers can do many things, and some programs can prove mathematical theorems. Today, these programs can prove some mathematical problems that make my head bigger. But we still say something simple, such as the Pythagorean theorem, which we have all learned in middle school, we have all learned the proof method of the Pythagorean theorem in Euclidean geometry, starting from the axioms of complex Euclidean geometry, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, which proves the Pythagorean theorem.
In fact, there are many ways to prove the Pythagorean theorem, but in fact, the way of proof of computer programs, as far as is known, has never been proposed before. So, what else besides bias can stop us from saying that programs are creative?
Not just mathematical things like chess or math, you know, some programs can even create music, and I'm not saying that the kind of creation that randomly throws all kinds of notes, these programs can produce music that we recognize, which has melodic forms and progressive themes, there are chapters that turn into harmonies, and no one has ever heard of these music, why can't we say that machines are creative, and what else can prevent us from saying that?
So if this argument is to be said, we must assume the existence of the soul in order to explain creativity, again, which seems wrong.
The question is, well, this question is: When I'm talking about creativity here, am I trying to introduce ideas about how we might feel when we're creative?
The answer is: no.
Everything I'm thinking about, as you know, is just talking about creativity, and I'm just brewing something new in my head, something that never came up. And in particular, something is brewing that your programmers haven't thought of yet. Remember, those who design chess programs don't seem to be able to play their chess programs, and chess programs move in ways that these programmers never thought of.
Well, these ideas about creativity may not work, but something comes with it, even if we can write a program, even if we have written a creative program, they can do something that no one ever thought of, and what the program does is just execute the program, right? It was nothing more than a series of lines of code, and those robots, or computers, and so on, were just automatically and mechanically executing the program's command code. We might say that even if we are very clever and can programs that can mechanically execute instructions, do things that we never thought of, even so, what the computer can do, the robot can do, is automatically and necessarily mechanically execute the program, it has no free will, but we have free will.
So, here's a new argument for the existence of the soul, that man has free will, that there is no mechanical object, that there is no robot, that computer can have free will, but that since we have free will, we must not be merely physical objects, there must be something extra, something immaterial, such as the soul, and perhaps the reason we need to believe in the soul is: to facilitate the interpretation of free will. This topic, free will, is a very, very, very complex topic about consciousness, and one might have to spend an entire semester thinking wholeheartedly about the philosophical question of consciousness.
Of course, this is also true, our department has such a class in this semester, spent a whole semester to discuss the problem of consciousness, our department also has a class, dedicated to the issue of free will, I will spend two minutes on this, so I am not implying that there is so much you need to know about this topic, I just want to raise this question as much as possible to help you realize: Why do I not agree that free will is the victory of the soul?
So what exactly is this argument?
The idea goes something like this:
One: We have free will
Two: I want to explain this, the computer is just executing the program, what is this view?
I think that in the language of philosophy, the computer is a deterministic system, which obeys the laws of physics, and the laws of physics are decisive. If you stand in this point of view, you must consider that in the case of the laws of physics and the principles of computer programming, how to construct, and so on, these wires are going on or off, these circuits are going on or off, and suddenly you are in that position, there are certain laws like that, assuming that the computer is in this state, it must become that state, and when you think that cause and effect, in this way, there is always something that happens beforehand. Then they cause these things to happen, so that once the antecedent is given, these consequences must follow, which is a deterministic picture.
The idea, of course, is that robots and computers are just deterministic systems, and if you are a deterministic system, you can't have free will, so
Two: Any entity that obeys determinism has no free will
Combining one and two, we conclude that if any entity that obeys determinism does not have free will, but we have free will, it shows that we do not obey determinism. Suppose we add a third point later: all purely physical systems adhere to determinism. Well, one and two say that we do not obey determinism, and three say that all purely physical systems obey determinism.
Well, synthesize one, two, three and we get: we are more than just purely physical systems. Conclusion, four: We are not just purely physical systems.
Well, that's the argument from free will. Now, this argument is valid, that is the term of philosophers. That is to say, with these three premises, we can indeed reach this conclusion. Interestingly, are these three premises true? And if they are to be all true, then each of them must be true.
Next time I'll spend a minute or two talking about this at the beginning, but the key to thinking next time is, are all three premises really true? Maybe one or a few are false? Well, next time we'll start there