Michael Shermer and Philip Goff || Solving the Mysteries of Consciousness, Free Will, and God

Michael is the founding publisher of Skeptic Magazine, a monthly columnist for Scientific American, and a presidential Fellow at Chapman University, where he teaches Skepticism one O one. He's the author of New York Times bestsellers Why People Believe Weird Things, The Believing Brain, and Heavens on Earth, The Scientific Search for the Afterlife, Immortality and Utopia. Goff is an associate

professor in philosophy at Central European University in Budapest. His main research focus is trying to explain how the brain produces consciousness. His first book, which was published by Oxford University Press, is called Consciousness and fundamental reality. Golf is currently working on a book on consciousness aimed at a general audience. Guy is so great to chat with you today. All right, you know this is yeah, this is not some light topics here, you know, but hopefully we'll have

solved some of the deepest mysteries of humanity. Not just humanity, it's deepest mysteries of the universe today. So let's start off by giving a little context for this chat. Michael, you wrote an article for Scientific American called will Science ever Solve the Mysteries of Consciousness, Free Will, and God? And in that article you contended that not only consciousness, but also free will and God are these sort of

final mysteries? Can you explain a little bit what countsil what criteria you know, does it count to be a final mystery? Yeah? So, But just by way of background, so it's a monthly one of my monthly columns. I've done over two hundred of these, and every month I got to come up with something new, you know, I can't just debunk astrology every month in tarot card readers.

That gets old pretty quick. So I've had in my head a long time this idea of the mysterians back when I met Martin Gardner in the late eighties, he called himself a mysterian. I was like, what's the mysterian? So as he articulated it, there's certain things that science could never prove or even really test because of their conceptual problems that are bounded by language, and he put

God and free will in that category. And Martin, you know, he was the longtime columnist and scientific American before me for twenty five years, and he's really one of the founders of the modern skeptical movement, which is generally also

associated with atheism, and yet he was a theist. He called himself a phidiast in James's pragmatism, and that, as James explained that there's certain issues where if you can't prove it one way or the other, like God or free will, it's okay to just go ahead and make the leap for whatever works for you. So Martin would argue, for example, I think the atheists have slightly better arguments than the theists do, but you know, we can't determine it one way or the other. So I choose to

believe in God because it works for me. I'm not trying to claim anything. I can't prove it. I'm just saying that's what I believe you full stop anyway. So I've had that in the back of my mind for a long time. So when I wrote this column, I thought, yeah, yeah, okay.

So you know, consciousness is famously the hard problem, and Stephen Pinker had just written about this, and I just read, you know, his new book Enlightenment Now where he talks about the hard problem of consciousness as a conceptual problem, not a scientific problem. That is. But here we have to define specifically what we mean by the hard problem because it's a little more complex than I made it

out to be in my column. That is what it feels like to be something, or what it is to be something, And now I know it's more complex than that. But you know the problem of other minds, like I can't know what it's like to be you. My little monkeylus in my head can't leap over into yours. So see what you're right on the screen of your mind. You know, this is not how it works, so that

could never be solved by science. What it feels like to be something else, I can only know, you know, in an experiential way, what it feels like to be me, and that's it. I can imagine what it's like to be you through mind reading or or I can imagine what it's like to be about, you know, with echolocation or something by getting in a closet and talking to the wall and see who I can feel it bouncing off or something like that. But that doesn't really mean

I know what it's like to be about anyway. So that's why I threw that one in there. And then well, Michael, well, Michael, hold on a second, and before you go through all of them, I want to just back up. I just wanted you to provide the context, and then we'll go in into each one individually, yeah, as a package. I mean, before we go into them, I did want to step back a moment and ask you both a question about

argumentation and reasoning as the route to truth. Do you both think that is the ultimate route to truth or even the only route to truth? I think that's an important discussion to have when we have this sort of discussion. Absolutely. I mean, if there is another route to truth, it's not one I know about. I mean about experiential well, experience, surely you have experience. Yeah, yeah, I guess. I guess. My starting point is there are three, perhaps three sources

of information about the world. One perhaps the most familiar is experiments and observation, you know, the scientific method. But I think we have another source of information about the world, namely the reality of consciousness, the immediate awareness of what of one's own conscious experience. So, you know, even if we if we had a theory, for example, that could account for all the data of observation and experiments, you know, the grand unified theory, but it couldn't account for the

reality of consciousness. I think that would be thereby falsified, because we know that consciousness exists from our own case from nothing is more evident than the realities of our feelings and experiences. So I'd say that they're the two main sources of data. And you know, so some people think of the scientific method as we just do observation experiments. In my view, we need to be a bit more expensive.

We need to take what we know about the world from observation and experiments, but also the reality of consciousness as we met, you know, and somehow find a way of putting the two together. And that's notoriously very difficult to do, but that, you know, I think that's that's how I see the project. And of course the third source is reasoning, logic, the law of non contradiction, mathematical logical reasoning. So so those three things I think would

be in mind. Yeah, that's a perfect articulation of I would agree that a public exchange of ideas is really the only way to get out of our own heads. So, for example, my way back around, I have an invitation to go to Costa Rica to spend doing to doing ayahuasca. I don't know if I don't even know if I want to do this, because apparently have the future guts out for several hours a day to get the full

experience of the way you finish. But the teation comes from a fellow named Graham Hancock, who is sort of what we would skeptics called one of these alternative archaeologists. You know, he thinks Sepeeriman's were built by these advanced advanced civilization that lived twenty thousand years ago and so on. But anyway, he's kind of into a spiritual type of truth and that he knows for sure that this other

spiritual world exists. It's another dimension or something. And the way to access it through the doors of perception, as it were, is through ayahuasca. And then if only I would do this, then I wouldn't know his truth about this spirit world. And the problem with that, in addition to that not wanting to pug for several days, several hours a day while I get to this other world, is that Let's say I do that and I suddenly return and say I was wrong. There is this other world.

I'm not a materialist anymore. I'm now a dual list or whatever. And I write a column in Scientific Americans saying I've discovered this new truth. And what I point to for you instead of a data set experiment or something, I point to you the ayahuasca and say here, you drink the tea and you'll see it yourself. And I don't think that can get us out of our heads. I'm just putting my truth into your head through this

artificial way of creating this other reality. And it's still not clear, you know, whether it's just all in the head or there is some other place to go. So at some point we have to get out of our heads and in a public way, you, you, or anybody can see what I'm pointing to and if you can't do that, then I think we're not doing science. Look, I want to thank you both for giving that really

eucinating response to my question. But I do have a question in response to that, Michael, because I wonder, like, what if the ultimate truth of reality happens to be something that isn'tcomprehensible to humans or does not coincide with your rational facilities? So what if, like, okay, let's say you die someday, well you will die something, but say

after sorry to break the news to you. When that happens, what if you discover you know, there is something it's nothing that you ever could have imagined or predicted based on the limited cognitive faculties that you evolved or not evolve. I guess we'll discuss God in a second, But do you see what I'm saying. What I'm saying is like, how do you like, why are you so sure that like your rationality trumps the experience. I'm not sure. And it's entirely possible that I could wake up in some

other place after my death. That's okay, fine, I'm open to that possibility, but that doesn't mean I can state in any assertive way that this could be true. I just don't know. So in skepticism, the default position is the null hypothesis. What you just described is we assume is not true until proven otherwise. Now, so the problem here is, let's say this happens and I wake up in this other place. How can I come back and communicate with you or anyone that you know. I've been

to the other side and I've seen it. It's great. And of course this is what people who have near death experiences tell us. And yet here's the problem external validation. Yes,

I'm not all the problem of external validation. Again, I can't tell the difference between this is what I describe in my book Heavin's on Earth, between say, even Alexander's passages in his for Proof of Heaven, this trip he took to Heaven, and then the opening pages of Sam Harris's book Waking Up, in which he talks about this trip he took on I think it was ecstasy or MDMA. To me, the narrative sounds the same. One took drugs, one had a brain experience while in a coma, and

the narratives sound the same to me. And the same thing with reading Oliver Sachs's books, his memoir, he talks about dropping acid in the sixties and the fantastic trips he took, and to me, they all sound the same. So how can we validate, get out of our heads and get some external validation, whether it's all just in our heads or some of them are actually real. Yeah, I mean I kind of broadly an agreement with what Michaels saying with reference to phenomena outside of the mind.

I'm a little bit hesitant about applying this consciousness. I mean, to come back to the problem of consciousness, I mean I kind of agreed with pretty much a lot of the problem as Michael articulated it. I mean I phrased it slightly differently. So the core of the problem consciousness for me is that physical science works with the purely quantitative vocabulary, whereas consciousness is an essentially quantitative phenomenon, just

in the sense that it involves qualities. If you think about the redness of a red experience, or the smell of coffee or the taste of a lemon, you can't capture these kind of qualities in the quantitative language of physical science. And in fact, this was well understood by the founder of physical science, Galileo. Right, So, Galileo only ever intended physical science as a partial account of reality.

He hoped that it could capture the quantitative, mathematical features of reality, but he never dreamt that it could capture the qualities of consciousness, which he believed resided in the soul. So I think, you know, physical science, because of the limits of its vocabulary, can never give us a complete

account of consciousness. It can never capture these subjective qualities. However, and this is I don't know maybe where I start to part company with micro My starting point is, we know that consciousness is a real nominon right each of us. It is not publicly accessible. You can't look inside my head and see my feelings and my pain. Well, each of us knows, and you know, it's uncontroversial. Each of us knows that it's real. So it has to it has to be integrated into our scientific picture of the

world somehow. Now, if we agree with physical science is not up to that task and it was never designed for that task, I think we need to look to other paradigms of scientific explanation. So I think maybe we part company at that point. So you don't call yourself a mysterian were very unconsciously, no, I'm I mean, I'm open to that. I think sterianism seriously as a as

a theoretical possibility. I mean, if you think we are we've evolved through natural selection, then you know it might not be surprising if we don't have access to all of you know, nature's mysteries. In fact, you know, if we've arvived, sorry, if we've evolved to survive rather than do science, you might think it's surprising that we can do as well as we can. But I guess I'm inclined to think, you know, why why would you go

for mystery if there are other possibilities? So I'm inclined to think there are other scientific paradigms on the table that can potentially give us a complete account, intelligible account of consciousness. Or I'm a proponent of to be known as panpsychism as an alternative scientific paradigm for explaining consciousness. So I guess my body is give that a go, and if that doesn't work out, I guess I think.

I guess I think that there are good reasons to think physical science can never give his complete account of the mind. As you know, it's never been what it's designed to do. But I think there are other non non physicalist modes of scientific paradigms. Try them out. If nothing works, then we can be mysterious. I guess that's so. Can you please explain to our listening audience what panpsychism is? Sure,

So I like to introduce this follows. I think you know, we've been trying for many decades now to to explain consciousness in terms of utterly non conscious processes in the brain, and we've got we've made very little progress on that, at least on the central problem of consciousness. So the

pansych Is proposed proposes an alternative research program. Rather than trying to explain consciousness in terms of non consciousness, we try to explain complex human and animal consciousness in terms of simpler forms of consciousness, simpler forms of consciousness that are then postulated to exist as basic, basic aspects of the matter. So that's the basic research program. Does that

relate Tononi's work or was it Juliu? I don't know if parent's first name TOI Julio Judio to I mean there are connected to pansych Is you know, it sounds a bit wacky, but I mean when I first started applying for jobs like twelve years ago, and people told me, people who had a lot of respect, who told me to keep pansychism secretly secret because you know, it's not

very credible. But in the last five or ten years, you know, in academic philosophy, this has gone from being a position that's kind of laughed up to be you know, a lot of philosophers thinking that it is perhaps our best hope for an intelligible solution to the problem of consciousness, largely because I mean that the influence of the rediscovery of some very important work in the nineteen twenties by the philosopher Virgin Russell and the scientist Arthur Eddington that

has sort of been rediscovered and causing a lot of interest in academic philosophy. A lot of my work is bringing together the literature there. But also there's this in neuroscience. One of the leading neuroscience theories of consciousness, Integrated information theory does have panpsychist implications, at least in the sense that it predicts that consciousness is more widespread than we ordinarily take it to be, and it also has arguably,

you know, a lot of empirical confirmation. I think there is a lot of empirical confirmation in terms of the non hard just in terms of the neurocorrelate's view in the sense. So like you know, I mean, it's interesting what have we learned from the neuroscience. Well, for one, it's interesting that the cerebellum doesn't really play much of a role in consciousness, and it's really kind of our higher order cerebral cortex functions and the one network that

seems to be particularly associated with consciousness. My colleague Daniel Bohrer has done written a book on this called The Ravenous Brain. I don't know if you read it, linking the frontal parietal brain network to consciousness and the frontal

pridal brain network associated with with intelligence general intelligence. You know, like IQ tests with concentration, but really integration, you know, like really the ability to integrate all the area it's like the executive area, although there's no specific area, like you know, it's no homunculous, but you know, it seems to be able to serve a coordination function. There's does

seem to be something there with integration. So yeah, Michael I wanted to ask your thoughts, you know, so we make sure we include you in this conversation, just putting that out there. Do you think that, like, even if we have a complete understanding of how consciousness arises from an emergent property of integration, is that going to satisfy you from a final perspective, Well, it depends what problem we're trying to solve. That would be the so called

easy problem, which doesn't really seem easy at all. But the fact that someone's cock, yeah, easier. My friend Christoph Cock, who I know well and have followed for the last twenty five years. You know, he seems to be working toward really a deeper understanding the neural correlates of consciousness. I do not know there recently he's embraced this panpsych is an idea through to Noni's itt okay, so that

gets my attention. So it just depends on, you know, if that research paradigm is successful, what problem is that solving. If it solves this problem of not what it's like to be something this qualitative experience, to me, that just seems like a conceptual problem, not a scientific one. But if it's you know, what are the neural correlates of consciousness, how does consciousness come online or something like that. As brains become larger and more complex, then that seems completely doable.

And so, for example, if we came back five hundred years from now, thousand years from now and looked at what neuroscientists were doing, you know, it could be entirely be you know, oh, we've completely solved that problem. Would they be able to say, oh, the mind body problem, Yeah, that's we solved that three hundred years ago. That's no problem,

and here's the answer that's possible. You know, it could be we're just approaching it the wrong layer or but what the mysterians say is that the limitation is in our conception language, the size of our brain, how our brains are structured, and that if we encountered an et from wherever, Vega or something and they had a brain, you know, ten times the size of ours, that it could be you know, the mind body problem is no

problem at all. They completely figured that out. And so you know, by mysterian, we just mean you know, for our brains at this moment, I think, yeah, I mean I think it's a good question, Mike, what are we trying to do here, And what is the question? I mean, the way I think about it is, what we want is that an intelligible explanation of how consciousness fits into our scientific story. We know it's real. We know it's real, so it must fit in somehow, and so the question

is how does it fit in? I think there are you know what most people think, Oh, the only scientific way to do it is to account for it in terms of physical science, in terms of you know, we just keep doing neuroscience. So there's this standard line people say,

you know, okay, the hard problem is hard. But if you look at the great success of physical science and explaining more and more of our universe, then you know that ought to give us confidence that will one day crack the problem of consciousness if we just carry on with kind of standard neuroscience. But I've got a slightly

different take on the history of science. You know, I argue in my book that the reason physical science has done so well is because Galileo kicks things off by taking consciousness outside of the domain of scientific inquiry, and he thereby gives physical scientists a more manageable task. Right, roughly, the task of constructing mathematical models for predicting the behavior of matter, and that project has gone really well, and

it provides really useful information. Right, if you can predict with great accuracy how matter behaves, then you can manipulate the world and have a wonderful technology. So that's gone really well. But it was never designed to account for the subjective qualities in our immediate awareness. It was designed to predict behavior. And so when I just don't buy it all these arguments, Oh, it's done really well at predicting behavior, so it's going to explain consciousness, it was

never designed to do that. I think if Galileo was to time travel to the present day and hear about this hard problem of consciousness, he'd say, you know, of course you can't give a physical account of consciousness. I designed physical science to predict behavior, to for quantities, not qualities.

I think, you know, we're going through a phase of history where we're sort of so blown away by the success of physical science that we've forgotten that it was always intended as a limited project of predicting that we hold on. Hold on a second, because like there's a whole wide swaths of psychologists that primarily rely on the qualitative method of analysis. Let's not like hate on them.

Absolutely no, there's insight and understanding that can be had, even descriptive, you know, descriptive understanding through fully understanding the experience of an individual. Well could be one example. But you know, there's a lot of humanistic psychologists who a lot of the maur clinicians, but some of them aren't work and just others even working in other fields like

social work, et cetera. There are some social science like sociology, some of them consider themselves social scientists, you know, where they try to extrapolate from a deep quality of analysis or something, and there are there are actually quantitative methods that help you, like code and you know, understand patterns and qualitative data. You're completely right, and I've oversimplified. One always has to sort of overgeneralize to get the general

picture out and then you find tune the details. Yeah, I think what I mean by physical science, I'm not talking about science. I'm talking about a very specific understanding of physical science aspect that has a purely quantitative vocabulary. I mean it's most exemptivid in physics, which is basically mathematics and maybe some causal notions. I think neuroscience is not too far away from that. So I suppose what my view is you cannot fully account for the qualities

of consciousness in that kind of vocabulary. But of course I mean that there are sciences that you know, have their data asking people what they're feeling or whatever right to that extent. To that extent, the data is come to psychology, certainly. But my point is, look, there's a lot of people for many decades now the dominant view is still now, we've just got to keep doing neuroscience, and we'll explain consciousness in a purely quantitative language of neuroscience.

I think that project we've never got anywhere with it. It's not what physical science was designed for, and I think there are just conceptual problems with it. So, but

that doesn't mean we can't account for consciousness scientifically. And I think that what the hope of the plan psychist research program that's very much so I know, is that we can at some point give an intelligible account of human and animal consciousness in terms of more basic forms of consciousness that are then postulated to exist as basic constitions and manner at least give that a go. Yeah, A couple points on this the When I mentioned clinicians here,

I was thinking of the recovered memory movement. What became clear there was the difference between experimental psychologists and clinical psychologists. And so if you're a clinician, you have a patient, a client, they're trying to explain, you know, why he or she feels depressed or it's overweight, can't sleep, whatever the symptoms are that they're there for, and they identify something in their past. I think, you know, I was

molested as a child. Now pretty soon that becomes a truth for them in their head, that is the explanation for my malaise, and for the clinician. The clinician is not there to determine what really happened. It's just that's the truth for my client. And if I get results and they feel less depressed, then I'm successful. But at some point the problem steps out of the clinicians room, when say, the person being accused of being the molester

is arrested and charged with a crime. And that's what happened in the nineties, and that caused a lot of people a great harm. And so we saw the difference there. It's not okay to just say it's my truth full stop when it has consequences for other people's realities. Okay, so that's one point. Second point back on the physical

sciences at Galileo. Now if the original mysterians Colin McGinn and Nom Chomsky, Nom Chomsky in particular, it's a great video lectury as at MIT where he's talking about he starts it at Newton and that Newton's identification of gravity and his statement I feigned no hypotheses. In other words, what is gravity? I don't know. It's kind of an occult thing. And my mathematics is just telling us what planets do and objects do when they're near each other in their mass and so on. But if you ask me,

but what is it? I don't know what it is. You know, gravity is the tendency for objects to attract when well, why do objects attract one another because of gravity? Well, you know this is a tautology. So now we're getting Philip at the problem you identified. It's from a quantitative

to a qualitative. Yeah, but what is it? Now? You know someone like Kip Thorn Caltech who deals with you know, general relativity, and so he'll tell you it has something to do with time and eCos into Einstein in equations and so on. I'm not sure I really understand it, but that almost starts to shift into that what it does, into that sort of qualitative features of the natural world that maybe the kind of science we've been doing is

not equipped to fully understand with the words that we use. Michael, I really appreciate those two points, and I definitely hear a Philip has to say to that, just really quickly. I was, you know, when I was making my point, I wasn't necessarily thinking about clinicians the example that might be helpful here. I was thinking of like Herb Simon and Newell, like when they first kind of started this

cognitive revolution. I mean they use cognitive modeling techniques or think a lout protocols where they asked large groups of participants to think a loud while they were solving a problem, for instance, and we learned a lot about the fundamental principles of cognition through that sort of subjective we say, a more subjective approach. I was more thinking about that along in those kind of lines. Yeah. Yeah, Well, back in the nineteenth century, Alfred Russell Wallace broke with Darwin

on this subject. He was the subject of my doctoral dissertation. I wrote a biography of him, and he argued, if natural selection is definitely true, but why would it create brains so large and so capable of experiencing things like mathematics, aesthetic appreciation, art, music, and so on. What's the purpose of that? Why do you need that? I mean, having a chip sized brain is all you need for survival. Why do you need a brain four times that size?

What would be the adaptive purpose of being able to function? Of being able to do calculus, quantum physics, whatever that not in his time, but any kind of mathematics or aesthetic appreciation. And Wallace carried that line of reasoning out where he concluded there has to be some kind of higher intelligence that put that spark in there, and Darwin said, no, no,

we're not going that far. And so, you know, there's a long private sou as you introduced natural selection in the formula, It's like, yeah, why would we be able to do this? This is an interesting problem and why are we the only ones to do it to this extent? Can I link back to some of the Chompsky stuff

Michael's Yeah, I mean I think so. I think this really connects to the influence of Russell and Eddington from the nineteen twenties, which is recently being mood discovered in academic philosophy, which is causing a great deal of interest for this punt psychis model. I mean, their starting point is very closely related to the Chompsky point. There that in the public mind, physics is giving us this complete

description of reality. But what Russell and Eddington realizes that when you it becomes apparent upon reflection that physical science is confined to telling us what matter does? You know, if you think about what physics tells us about an electron tells us as mass and charge, and these characteristics are characterized completely behavioristically. You know, charges characterized in terms of attraction, repulsion, gravit Mass is characterized in terms of

gravitational attraction and resistance to acceleration. So physics tells us what the electron does, how it behaves. It tells us nothing about what losses like to call the intrinsic nature of the electron, how the electron is in and of itself. So this is sometimes called the problem of intrinsic natures. You know, like that physical science tells us nothing about the intrinsic nature of matter. It tells us great information about how it behaves, but it doesn't tell us how

it is in and of itself. So there's this sort of huge hole in our scientific picture of the universe. Now, the genius of Russell and Eddington, though, and this is where it becomes non mysterian, or sort of moves beyond mysterious. And they said, well, look, their genius was to relate that problem to the problem of consciousness. Right. The problem of consciousness is, we're looking for this place for consciousness.

We know it exists. Where can we put it? The problem of intrinsic nature says, we don't know the intrinsic nature of matter. So Russell and Eddington said, well, put the put consciousness in the whole. We've got this whole, we've got. We need to find a place for consciousness. But conscious is not so the idea is there's just matter, right, that's all. There is just matter, nothing supernatural. Physical science tells us what it does, how it behaves, but its

intrinsic nature is constituted of forms of consciousness. So this gives us a beautiful, simple, parsimonious way of integrating consciousness into our scientific picture of the world, and it gives us a way that avoids the problems of materialism on the one hand, the problems of dualism on the other. So that's the kind of research program, the kind of general picture of how consciousness fits in that is becoming attractive to a lot of philosophers and some neuroscientists now.

And yeah, don't need to be mysterious, we can be Russell Eddington pan psychisist. So let's transition to free will from that point. Let's see if we can play that same logic to free will and God as well. We'll see. And Michael, you know, if you had any points you and responded that maybe could fold it into the free will especially. Yeah, great, we can move on. Great. So you write in your article that we live in a deterministic universe and still we act as though we have

free will. Could you elaborate a little bit more, Michael, what you meant by that. Yeah, So it's kind of tease a part of the different elements of this. You can say free will is an illusion, but it's a great illusion. It works. It's a useful fiction. As the French philosopher Hans Weener called it. It certainly feels like I have free will. I'm making choices. That's what it seems like intuitively, but that would still be the determinists position.

I'm arguing along the lines of what Dan Danna argues, and freedom evolves that we are complex enough organisms that there are so many variables at work, and the fact that we are part of the causal net ourselves. By being aware of these vectors that are influencing us and pushing us around to the point where we can affect them back, we can push back. And so even though

it's all determined, we live in a determined universe. Being part of the causal net and being aware and self aware of the causal variables influencing us, we can do something about it. And out of that emerges something like volition or choice or whatever word you want to use.

And part of the problem here again is language. You know, I start using active verbs, and I hear determine it's using active verbs all the time, as if you know they're they're making these choices because that's what it feels like, and I think it's okay to do that, because that isn't in essence what we're doing so. The example I use, say, I'm aware that in the late afternoon I'm going to get a craving for chocolate chip cookies, so ahead of time,

make sure I don't have any in the house. I'm not going to be going to the store at that time or the shop that has cookies or something. I'm aware of these influences on my behavior that you know future Shermer is going to do this, so current Shermer can affect the variables that I know is that he knows is coming or I who he me, so something like that. But again I think I put in the mysterian category because we're delimited by the language we use

these words. If it's determined, how can you be free, well, not really free free, there's no not libertarian free will, there's no homunculus. But even if there were, you know, then there'd have to be a mini me inside me, and then a mini me, mini mini me inside mini me inside me, and so on, and that doesn't solve

the problem either. So to me, it's just one of the conceptual head scratchers, the fact that now I'm not a philosopher, so from an outsider to me, it seems like a problem like this that's been talked about for twenty five hundred years, and there's no consensus, like there's no climate Consensus committee for free will that says, yeah, ninety seven percent of philosophers agree that compatibilism is true

or determinism is true or whatever. I've even seen these surveys that I cite that big one that David Chalmers did in two thousand and nine of thirty six hundred professional philosophers, graduate students, professors and so on, and compatible is the compatibleist position was fifty nine percent, and embrace the compatiblist position, And then the next category was terminus and the lowest one was libertarian free will. So to me, that tells us, I mean, we don't do this by vote.

But on the other hand, it does give us a clue that there's something else going on here. When the smartest people who know the most about a subject can't agree even remotely, there's no general consensus like there isn't, say climate, then there's something else wrong with the language or the concept itself that's not going to get us there. I want to thank you for posing that problem so articularly you brought this mini me idea, and what if

you're not thinking about that in the right way. So it seems like the brain is like something that does seem to be a consensus in the field of cognituroscience is that the brain is hierarchically organized in a sense so that there are not all many us Maybe I would I just want to put out there and then just discuss this not you know, we are comprised of multiple subcomponents, but there are some are like we talked about earlier, the prefrontal pridal brain network that is higher

level coordination, so there is perhaps gives you more free will than lower order ones. Maybe we can actually rank in a hierarchy, like which subcomponents are more allows us more degrees of them than others. I'm just putting this out there, and you guys, yeah, that's very interesting. I mean, I guess, I guess what you're both doing is trying to make sense of compatibilist notions of free will, and

maybe we should get clear on this distinction. I mean, actually, one thing I'd like to say from the start, I think this problem, to my mind is very different from the problem of consciousness in the sense that I think as I've said many times, I think we know for certain consciousness is real, so there's a genuine phenomenon there that we have to account for somehow. But I don't think we have that same kind of certainty with free will, right.

It certainly seems as though we're free, you know, it seems as though certain of my decisions are completely up to me, you know, in a sense that I'm not compelled to act by prior causes. But that could be an illusion, right, It could be that it feels as I'm free, but I'm not. However, I'm personally not persuaded. And this is, as Michael points out, I'm in the

minority among philosophers. I'm personally not persuaded by any of the scientific or philosophical arguments against free will or for determinism. And so I'm a tentative believer not only in free will, but in free will after particularly strong libertarian kind. So the idea is here. The idea here is that certain of my choices are completely up to me, in the

sense that they're not determined by prior causes. I don't think there is I've never seen the scientific case that the brain is I mean, you know, I mean, I think, just to finish this up, I think, you know, there are certain in any philosophical paradigm, there are certain convictions that are defended on the basis of evidence, and then there are certain kind of dogmas that are just generally accepted as part of the zeitgeist. I think determinism is

like that. I've never seen a peer reviewed scientific paper proving that the brain is a deterministic machine. I mean, there's certainly no consensus among you know, there isn't a consensus in the search literature, so I don't see so whereas Michael and Scott also seem to say, is assuming most the competive as says, okay, science has shown we're not free in the in the libertarian sense, but we can try and work out some kind of watered down motion of freedom. And I think that's what that's what

Dennett does, for example. But I'm still not persuaded, you know, I'm I'm open minded, but I'm still not persuaded that there isn't evidence that I'm not free in the sense we ordinary take ourselves to be. So yeah, that's my positional. Really, Wow, you're you're the first professional philosopher I met who embraces tentatively right, what you're open, you're open to it. If there were scientific if someone showed me, you know, like

you said, climate change is the great example. I believe in climate change because there's a consensus in literay, if they're emerged. If someone showed me a peer reviewed scientific paper proving the brain is a deterministic mechanism, I'd give it up in a second. But I don't. I don't see that. The determinists then would counter well, but you know, all thoughts are just you know, neurons firing, just chemical swapping across synaptic gaps. It's a it's a mechanical system them,

it's a physical system. It's a it's a Galileean Newtonian clockwork system. What's your response to that? So you know, your thoughts are just they're just generating there. You have no idea why they're doing what they're doing. I think this maybe gets back to the consciousness issue. So my view, my Pun Russell Eddington Punt psychos view is does just the brain right, But physical science doesn't tell us what the brain is. It just tells us what it does.

And it's parts two. My mind is at least part of the intrinsic nature of my brain. So yeah, my brain is the only stuff. There's nothing supernatural, it's no souls. My brain is the only thing doing stuff. But my conscious mind is part of the intrinsic nature of my brain. So I think they're consistent. I'm just not persuaded that there is any scientific evidence that the brain as a

whole is a deterministic system. Yeah. Well, this was Benjamin Leabay's experiments where you know, some part of your brain is making this decision for you before your conscious part of your brain is even aware of it, and that that sounds like a deterministic care right, that's consistent with the hardcore organization of the brain, right, Yeah, yeah, yeah. So Libert's experiments are you know, really interesting. So Libert so these experiments, so these are the classic experiments that

are appealed to in this context. So he took, you know, a group of subjects and asked them to make a free choice under experimental conditions. And it was always something trivial, like, you know, whether to press a button on the left rather than the right or something. And then he wanted to ascertain the time at which the free choice happened. So he got them looking at a clock on the wall and they had to note the time at which

it happens. And at the same time, he has them looked up to an eg and he can so he can measure the time at which the brain initiates the decision. So the shocking result was that the brain initiates the decision on average three hundred milliseconds before the subject consciously records making it. So people say, you know, this is shows that free will is an illusion that you know, the brain decides what we're going to do before we consciously decide. So I think these are fascinating experient I

think the conclusions are grossly exaggerating. I mean, one problem that Daniel Dennett, in fact his points to is that there's a much more simple interpretation of the data, namely that we systematically get wrong the times of our decisions, at least in these highly artificial circumstances. You know, what these subjects were asked to do is make a decision

and simultaneously note the time you made it. And you know, maybe we can't do that, but can I just just just finally sorry to talk to you about just the broader point on the livered stuff and similar experiments is that the three decisions in inverted commas that he focuses on are not the free choices that anyone cares about, right, They're just arbitrary things like pressing a button on the

leprop and the right. You know what proposents of free will care about a rational decisions like you know, whether to take a job, whether to get married, whether to betray your friend. These decisions where we freely choose from among rational considerations, and the lib experience have nothing to say. But so at the best they show that the conscious mind can't you know, instigate a completely random, meaningless action. But it doesn't show and you know who cares about that?

So yeah, that's sort of and I think Roy Baumeister has done a good job showing we have this little wiggle room at least even when our subconscious may make a decision. Then there's also, like, you know, there's like subconscious decisions and conscious decisions. You know, like even though like all my computations have told me like this is the one for me to marry, there's still this like

conscious decision. I can say, well, despite how I feel about this and despite you know what my subconscious has computed for me, you know, like I'm not gonna I'm going to continue dating, you know, yeah a limit. In his final book before he died, he declared himself compatibleist. He rejected hard determinism, even even though his own research is cited by determinists, although, as I point out in my book the moral arc that there's also freed won't.

Later experiments added elements where you could push another button at the last minute and change your mind and override the initial impulse, like, oh, I'm going to appreciate that, but no, no no, I'm going to push big nope, nope, nope, back to a no B. And so what's going on there? Or is I like to ask, say, what's the difference between us who are not drug addicts and the drug addict who just cannot control or the alcoholic can't take the drink or whatever. Is that person just more determined

than you and I are determined? And what would that mean to say, more determined or less determined? So there's a scale there, some kind of quantitative scale of determinism in that case, that's not the right word. Wow, Michael, you just opened up such a can of worms. If you really, like, if our brains compute all the real deep aiplications of your point, that would be obviously be a conversation that would last days and months and years,

probably a lifetime. But well, okay, what if you bring in the genes into the picture here, right, Like, well, we know for a fact that some people have, through heredity, a more difficult time resisting certain temptations and others. I think it's a fair statement to say. It shouldn't be

particularly controversial to say that. So it is easier for your effort, you know, like for one person it might obviously like I'm not going to get addicted, like I don't have, you know, like that strong urge to do that. But so that do they have more free will to do that than person B, who might come from a wrong family of alcoholism? Right, So, I mean maybe these are not the right words. We're using the wrong language. You mentioned right bymeister you know he and John Tierney

have that great book Willpower. Yeah, so he you know, it's just chapter after chapter what you can do about this? And here's what the research shows about how you can gain control over your thoughts. Well, what are you doing

when you do that? You can say, well, it's all determined. Yeah, but some part of me is jumping into the middle of the causal chain and say no, no, I'm going to move down the left path instead of the right path because I'm aware if I go down the right path, I'm going to become an addict or a cigarette smoker, an alcoholic. And so I know if I do, I

can move down the left path. Now, the determinists would say, yeah, but you didn't have you know, some particle that did something billion years ago, you know, ultimately got into your neuron and and made it fire this way instead of that. I don't know, but to me, it's still a kind of additional action, you know. But I feel like mechanicalistically, we can kind of understand that, you know, like the

BA ten Like you said, like, where is it? I'm like, I'd say, like, basically, it's the BA ten like and then of course the question is, well, what is instant in that? But genes do have some sort of blueprint for the extent to which these brain activations are going to be easily activated, you know, like psychopaths, when you scan their brains, there these certain subcortical regions that are almost dark, you know, like they're just not activating by

default at all. So I think it's interesting. I think how genes not deterministically, but probabilistically influence whether or not you're going to go lifetime with a lot of easy default activations of certain brain areas that exert control in a top down way on certain functions. Okay, here's my

final thought experiment too, for the hardcore determinists. Okay, so the hardcore determinist is married, happily married, and it goes to a comp prince and meets this attractive person and they and they end up with a hookup, and the spouse finds out, you know, when they get home, and he said, well, now listen, see, honey, my thoughts come from where I'm not, I know, not where my genes, you know, my neurons were firing, and you know, I just really have no volitional choice in the matter. It's

all determined. You know, could even finish the argument before the hand comes across and slaps the face. Sure, you know, how could you have done otherwise? Yeah? You could have done otherwise, and you better not do it again. Okay, Well, so, yeah, I want to be very queer Michael, culpability is not the same as you know explanation. Well, well, but the hardcore determinists would say, you're not really culpable. But I'm not a hard core determinist. Yeah, yeah, I mean, I guess,

I guess i'd agree. I guess if I if I wasn't a libertarian, if I was persuaded that in Peragos Falls, I'd be some kind of compatibilist rather than a hard determinist. And you know, in either case, whether there's libertarian free will or not, for all the reasons you've both been saying this, there's going to be a really complicated story here. You know, a difference between base desires what you want to do, and higher order desires what you want to

want to do. It's kind of trying to characterize the addictive person in that way that they want the cigarettes, but they don't want to want and there's going to be some story we can tell there about something like freedom. So so I think actually the libertarian compatibis will have a lot in common. A lot can hold a lot in common, and there's going to be this kind of

complicated story that can be agreed on. But I'm just not persuaded that the You know, I think we do think about many of our choices in the libertarian way, and I don't yet find any scientific reason do they otherwise to give that up tomorrow? Well, so in fifteen minutes, do you think we can we can solve God? The existence of God? Totally? No, absolutely, no topic, small topic. You're a pan psychist, what is it? Does that mean

you're necessarily also a pantheist? Okay, good? I mean pansil Anzechism is, you know, and this is the fortunate thing that you know, it has these unfortunate cultural kind of take cultural associations with certain kind of New Age thinking and stuff. But you know, I think you should dittribute on its explanatory power rather than its cultural associations. And it's panpsychism is intended as a you know, a cold

blooded best explanation of consciousness. It doesn't have any necessary connection to anything supernatural or theological on the topic of God, you know, I mean, yeah, I don't see why. I guess I wasn't presided by Michaels that we should be mysterious about God, So I don't see why God isn't the kind of thing we can more and less straightforwardly

offer evidence for and against. So I'm actually agnostic because I think there's very powerful evidence against the existence of God, and I also think there's very powerful evidence for the existence of God. So I think the jewelry is kind of out there. So yeah. So, like in the Martin Gardner sense I mentioned of the arguments between theos atheas, he said, atheists have slightly better argument, but always slightly the theats have they have good like the design argument

for example. Yeah, I guess I think the case against the familiar problem of evil, I think is the existence of evil and suffering. It's very strong evidence against this of God. I don't think religious philosophers have ever come up with anywhere near plausible explanations for why a loving God would allow those things to happen. And I think this problem has become worse since our moral awareness has progressed. So we now, for example, think of animal animal's interests.

It's morally significant, and so this raised the question, you know, why would loving God choose to create life through a horrific process of natural selection? But in terms of it, so I mean, I am you're going to disagree with me now, Michael. I think there is force to the argument for God from the fine tuning of this surprising discovery in the last forty years, completely surprising that some of the numbers in basic physics are against improbable odds, exactly as they need to be for life to be

physically possible. So, just to take one example from Martin Reese, the strong nuclear force is no point no not seven. If it had been no point no not six or less, we'd just have a universe of hydrogen. If it had been no point not eight or more, that the hydrogen would difused into heavy elements. In either case we'd have absolutely no chemical complexity in their fort no life. So God was a chemist well exist. Like many scientists and philosophers,

I think that this needs to be explained. But there seemed to be two explanations. One is that God created the universe and set those numbers in order to make a universal life as possible, or the other explanation the multiverse hypothesis. There are a huge, perhaps infinite number of universes which between them exemplify a large range of these numbers, so that it becomes statistically inevitable that you'll get one

with the right laws for life. Now, you know, the atheists say, oh, it must be the multiverse, and the theists say, oh it must be God. You know, to mind, man, these books are like pretty crazy hypotheses. And I don't think we're in a talking about things, you know, we're not in I don't think we're in a rational position to decide one way or the other. So I, you know, were going to settle We're not going to settle this in the next five minutes once and for all. We

are a mysterian. Well, okay, a couple of things on that now. My physicists cosmologist friends tell me that the multiverse idea was not conceived as an explanation for the fine tuning. That it is derived from the equations, predictions of equations, or this, there should be multiple universes of various kinds, the quantum kind or just the cosmological kind, And it is not just a fallback position by desperate

atheists to explain why there can't be a God. This is what theists argue, Oh, you guys, what's the difference between the multiverse and God? But second, Stephen Weinberg makes this point. The Nobel laureate physicist that you know, we don't know enough to say that the fine tuning you had to be this way or else, you know, it couldn't have come about that we don't have a unified theory of physics that ex you know, unites the global

general relativity and quantum physics. That there might be some underlying equations that then these fine twoed numbers end up falling into place perfectly well, totally understandable because of this underlying principles that we don't yet understand. So before we draw any conclusions one way or the other, you know, we need to wait on how that works out. Now.

The reason I threw God into the mysteriing category in part because of my numerous debates I've done over the years with theis where they make these arguments like the fine tuning argument, cosmological argument for the first cause, prime movement, all that, and you know, I counter them, and at some point or they go through prayers and miracles and the origins of consciousness, the origins of morality, and I

encounter all those arguments. I ask, you know that there should be some way of measuring this deity and its actions in this world and their ultimate fallback is God is outside of space and time. Okay, if God is not a natural being, then how would you know it exists? Because we're natural beings. You can't measure something that's non natural. In that sense, there's no such thing as a supernatural to paranormal, these are just words we use to describe

things we understand. And so my counterexample is like said my data. You know, there's this theory by Roger Penrose and Stuart hammer Off about consciousness arrive, derives, or instantiates through these microtubules inside neurons. Anyway, they have this long,

complex theory. Almost no neuroscientists accept it. But their idea is that these quantum effects happen in a warm environment like a brain, in these microtubules, and when the wave functions collapse at a certain pattern of neural firing, it can leave my skull and go into your skull. So that this would explain mind reading, for example, or spooky

action at a distance between minds. And Okay, I don't believe any of this, but let's say this was true, and this would no longer make it esp paranormal psychic power. It would just be a branch of quantum consciousness or something. It would just be a part of the natural world. We didn't understand before and now we do. So essentially we're eliminating paranormal supernatural explanation by incorporating them into the

natural world. And so what we describe as God doing things or the characteristics of God, to me, if it's true, then it would just God would just be part of the natural world. It would just be like a super advanced extraterrestrial intelligence. The analogy is if you know, if I show a neanderthol And iPhone, you know, this would be like I'm God, or you know, I have this device that's God. Like it's just any like Clark's third law,

any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. Or you could say God, so how would we know? And what do you mean by God? So therefore it's a mysterian anyway, That's how I ended up with that conclusion. Thank you for that explaining why you got to that conclusion. You know, I want to think of this from an existential perspective for a second, because like the construct of God, I think, you know, evolved for to sort of a function, a

good cycle, logical function. You know, humans seem to have this deep need for a higher meaning or a sort of higher personal meaning for their lives, and to think that there's a reason for all this that we're going through, you know that all the suffering as well as the joy is do you think that like there's any sort of I'm bey asking both of you, do you think there's any sort of scientific finding, even if like the microtoobules TYPEOS is correct, that can speak or give hope

to those existential concerns that humans have. That's I mean, I think that links nicely to Michael's last point in a way that you know, you might think the best explanation to fine tuning is some kind of intelligent design or value involved in shaping the nu us. I mean an interesting case Nagel, who we started off talking about his recent Is twenty twelve book that's got really a

lot of very critical reviews. He takes the fine tuning and other things very seriously, but he doesn't believe in God. He believes that the universe has some kind of inherent teleology or direction of Yes, so it's not obvious is just because we need, even if we do need to postulate something like that and I'm not saying we do. It's not obvious that it would, you know, satisfy our religious impulses or the kind of god we're looking for. Can I say a couple of things about the multiverse

that from in related or sorry or absolutely? But yeah, so no, I just really stimulated by these kind of So Michaels right that there is speculative support for some kind of multiverse. But one crucial point that I can get over so two points though, two problems. One crucial point often gets overlooked is that what you don't get from the physics is any grounds for thinking these different universes have different laws, right, That doesn't come out of

the physics. And that's what you need in order to explain the fine tuning. Because the idea is there's all these different universes and that the relevant parameters in physics, you know, they have all different values, so it becomes statistically inevitable that you'll have a fine tuned universe. But actually you can't get that out of the physics. So you need to go a little bit beyond the physics

to explain the fine tuning. But the other point is there is this big problem in the contemporary multiverse theory called the Boltzmann brain problem. I don't know how much we want to go. I mean, it's very just to put the essence I think, and I think physicists think of it is it's kind of a false prediction of the theory. The standard, the most scientific According to the most scientifically supported version of the multiverse, highly ordered universes

like ours are incredibly rare, unbelievably rare. Even among the subset of universes with observers in highly ordered universes are incredibly rare, in fact, So this is from Roger Penrose demonstrated that the most common kind of observer in the multiverse are these Boltzmann brains, these brains that just spontaneously come into being out of chaos and then and then

go back into the voide. So even amongst the set of universes with observers, our universe is highly on usual, and most physicists will take that to be a disconfirmation of the standard multiverse. Maybe the theory can be tinkered with, but it's as it stands. It's it's a strong prediction problem.

So I sort of think actually both God and the multiverse have false predictions, like I think if the problem of evil is kind of a false prediction because you think the god hypothesis predicts that there'd be a much better world than we in fact have, So that's a kind of discomfirmation. The multiverse theory has this baltsm of brain.

So and again I think that kind of times. But even if there is some sort of a designer or tinker that set the dials in a way, the counter that is, the universe isn't very finely tuned for life. Life can exist in particularly conscious life almost nowhere. It's very very rare environments in which this could happen, and

as far as we know so far, it's only happened once. Yeah, probably not the case, but in any case it would It would certainly take, by the natural processes of origins of life and evolution, billions of years to get to sentience and consciousness. So if a designer did this, you know, why set it up where it takes. So the universe is thirteen point seven billion years old es centrally, it takes you know what, nine billion years to even get started.

If there's some purpose to it or some design to it, it truly certainly seems wasteful that you know, ninety nine point nine percent of the universe is not finally doing for life, and you know ninety nine percent of the time of the universe is you know, was completely wasted.

And then finally, in the last two thousand years, Jesus comes and we're all saying, okay, absolutely, I mean, I can I just I mean, I completely agree with Michael on I mean, I take that to be actually, in a sense, part of the problem of evil and part of the false prediction of theism. But then there's a question, is well, is that a worse false prediction than the

Boltzman brain problem? And we've got to I mean, I think most physicists say, with the multiverse hypothesis, we're going to have to tinker with it to get rid of this Boltzman brain problem. What a theist could say, I'm not a theist, but what could says, well, let's tinker with the theistic hypothesis. So John Stuart Mill answered these kind of problems Michael's raising and the more gentle move by saying, well, God isn't all powerfule, maybe God has

limited power. So maybe you know the best exit you look to the fine tuning, and you explain the evil and suffering, the emptiness of the unise in terms of the limited powers of God. The problem. You know, a lot of dogmatic believers the problem that you know, don't want to tinker with. So that's that's one problem. So as I see it, you know, I think the fine

tuning is a real problem. There are two explanations that both have pretty serious false predictions, but maybe they can be tinkered with so that they get around these fictions. I don't know. I think it's an interesting open question, but I don't think we should. I guess things are so polarized now right, You've got either side not wanting to give any ground, you know. And I think this is because people like the comfort of certainty. You know.

The atheists want to think, you know, the religious people are sort of backward fools because that gives you a kind of certainty comfort. The theists just want to think the atheists are sort of in denial. But you know, I think we need to face up to the fact that, you know, there's a lot less certainty in these matters

libertary and free will. I think it's saying that we ordinarily think and and certainly since the fine tuning, I think there's there's a richer questionnaire that we should think about, and it's very open. You know, if the laws of nature have built into them some kind of teleology, which appears to be the case in the sense that you go from this kind of general grule of an early universe where there's not much structure at all, to what

we have today, where there's a lot of structure. If you want to call that teleology, well, that's true, and that's the result of the laws of nature. You end up with these emergent properties that lead to more complex systems. You know. Gould used to make this point that in terms of like a purpose driven universe, well, if you're at the left wall of simplicity, you can only go to the right and become more complex if you're going

to do anything at all. So if you want to call that, you know, sort of a purposeful universe, find but that isn't what most people mean by god, you know, they really anthropomorphize it. There there's this agent out there, advanced super powerful agent. So again, yeah, what's the interestween that and a super advanced extraterrustrial intelligence that can genetically engineer organisms and create solar systems, and even cause stars to collapse into black holes in the singularity. They create

a new universe. Well, any entity that creates universes in life is God. Yeah, yeah, I mean what legal means by teleology. He takes it to be a basic law of nature. There's some teleological laws part of the basic laws of nature. So I think that is going beyond you know, the standard scientific picture, you know, I mean the theistic type of I entering with that. There is some kind of actual designer, So so I think that

would be going beyond. You know. Freeman Dice makes it as this line in one of his books that drives atheists crazy, where it's almost as if the universe knew we were coming. And I'm pretty sure he's I don't know if he's an atheist or but an agnostic or something. And of course Christians glom onto that. You see, even the physical freemon dicens we were coming, where Stephen Hawking says, and then we'll know the mind of God. Oh stop

using those words. So could we wrap up here? Basically, we all know where Michael stands on these three things because he wrote the article and that was the inspiration for this chat today, maybe it will go. Let me just say really quickly what I think. Yeah, really quickly, and I know what you think about. Well, you know, I'm going to you know, I kind of like the spirit of possibility and openness that someday there will be discovery.

So I'm inclined to not say either of the three our final mysteries, and to say and I sort of have this belief that all will be revealed. Now maybe we won't be conscious to know what was revealed, but I just feel like if humanity and this might be a big if, but if humanity can last long enough and we can kind of advance our scientific technologies to a certain degree that is unimaginable today, which I think will be possible, you know, if we could fast forward

like two thousand years from now. I sort of have this intuition that all will be revealed and that will be like, oh shit, like that's what it was. You know, That's just my intuition. So what's your conclusion there, Philip on these three Well, that's I think I share your hope. I think on consciousness is you know, my main area work. I think there is a positive research program that really, you know, could make work and is already starting to

make progress. And I think, you know, we're held back by a sort of dogmatic, attached attachment to materialism, not too unsimilar to the dogmatism that Copernicus and Galileo based and I'm not comparing myself to this was the views of Russell and Eddington. So I think there is a really positive proposal there that might work out. It might not work out, it might work out, and we should give it a chance. Free will, I think we just

don't know enough about the brain yet. And we you know, we think we know more about the brain, and it is an empirical question. Ultimately we will know enough about the brain to know whether free will is an illusion, and it might be, but I I just don't think we're anywhere near knowing, you know, that kind of detail

about the hugely complex system that is the brain. And on God, I think before the nineteen seventies you should be an atheist, you know, God was there was no sign of God in physics, and I think that's still with us because for two hundred years it just looked like God had been ruled out. But I think the

surprising discovery the fine tuning. I think that when you dispassionately think about that, I think that you know, there is some force to that argument, but there's another explanation, and so you know, I think we have to wait. I hope that this will be resolved. Maybe, as Michael said, maybe the fine tuning problem will go away as physics developed. Maybe we'll get more confirmation for the right kind of multiverse,

and then God will become ruled out again. But at the moment, I think were the dispassionate, unbiased thinker ought to be sort of fifty to fifty a matter. Ah wow, Well, thank you guys so much for this chat, and thank you Michael for writing that article to spur this conversation in the first place. You are I mean, this is great. Thanks for hosting this. This is a good conversation. This is how we asked knowledge. It was great fun and anyone that wants to weigh in on these heavy topics

please weigh in in the comments section. Thanks for listening to the Psychology Podcast. I hope you enjoyed this episode. If you'd like to react in some way to something you heard, I encourage you to join in the discussion. At thus Psychology podcast dot com. That's the Psychology podcast dot com. Also please add a rating and review of the Psychology Podcast on iTunes. Thanks for being such a great supporter of the podcast, and tune in next time

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