4.4 • 921 Ratings
🗓️ 2 May 2023
⏱️ 87 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
It’s become fashionable to argue that free will is a fiction: that we humans are in the thrall of animal urges and unconscious biases and only think that we are choosing freely. In Freely Determined, research psychologist Kennon Sheldon argues that this perception is not only wrong but also dangerous.
Shermer and Sheldon discuss: definitions of free will, determinism, compatibilism, libertarian free will • dualism • reductionism, materialism, predetermination, and epiphenomenalism • Christian List’s three capacities for free will • AI, Star Trek’s Data, sentience and consciousness, ChatGPT, GPT-4 • how what people believe about free will and determinism influences their behaviors • the case for hard determinism • brain injuries, tumors, addictions, and other “determiners” of behavior • emergence • symbolic self • System 1 vs. System 2 thinking • Experiencing Self vs. Remembered Self • subjective well-being and happiness.
Kennon M. Sheldon is professor of psychology at the University of Missouri. He is one of the founding researchers of positive psychology, a fellow of the American Psychological Association, and a recipient of the Templeton Foundation Positive Psychology Prize. He lives in Columbia, Missouri. He is the author of numerous scientific papers and scholarly books, including Stability of Happiness: Theories and Evidence on Whether Happiness Can Change; Designing the Future of Positive Psychology: Taking Stock and Moving Forward; Current Directions in Psychological Science; and Self-Determination Theory in the Clinic. His new book integrates all this research into a popular trade book Freely Determined: What the New Psychology of the Self Teaches Us About How to Live.
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0:56.1 | anything you can imagine here's one that I really need to take Shakespeare right I haven't |
1:01.3 | taken this one yet. 36, 30 minute lectures. |
1:06.4 | Shakespeare, comedies, histories and tragedies. Yes, of course I've read a few of them. I've seen all the |
1:10.9 | Shakespeare movies and so on. I've even seen Shakespeare and love, but I think that's not the real thing here. This is a much deeper analysis. |
1:18.0 | Shakespeare then and now the nature of Shakespeare's plays and then they go through them |
1:23.0 | 12th night Shakespeare comedy the taming of the shrew farce and romance the merchants of |
1:28.0 | Venice whenever I watch Jeopardy I always miss the Shakespeare questions and they |
1:32.2 | have them all the time. |
1:33.4 | Richard the third, Richard the second, Henry the fourth, and so on and so on and so on. |
1:39.1 | All the way, let's see what the last one is. |
1:40.6 | Macbeth, enter two murderers. |
1:42.4 | Ooh, that sounds good sounds good all right check it out |
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