Importance of Free Will (Rabbi Dovid Gottleib) (Jewish Philosophy)

today maybe we won't get to it today we'll get to it tomorrow the day after next week I want to start circling around the subject with a few um observations about everyday life everybody's lives and then hopefully when we get to the center of the problem we'll be able to see something which will give us some some orientation let's SP start with the idea of Pride and I want to talk now about whether the price is good or bad um but let's just talk about what we are proud of what kinds of things make us proud let's say about ourselves what kinds of things and you know people vary and psychology isn't the same but uh there are some things where if a person said he was proud you'd understand him and there are other things where if a person said he was proud you would find very odd very peculiar to say he was proud of that what kinds of things is it understandable that a person should say I'm proud of that accomplishment say again accomplishment oh I think that word's going to be very important here accomplishments accomplishments let's see let's take a condition of Life which you could have have either because you made it for yourself or because it happened without any effort on your part there are people I know a few who are thin because of their metabolism they can eat and drink anything they want in any quantities and they stay thin I know other people who di who di seriously and are thin do you think that they could be equally proud of being thin wouldn't it be natural that the person who put an effort into it and whose effort was key in producing his appropriate weight would be prouder of being of appropriate weight than someone who's just jees are that way let's say someone was a lot of money let's say someone who as you say it's an accomplishment he worked hard for it you have three cases worked hard for it inherited inherited it and won the lottery now if a person could be proud of having a lot of money at at all it seems if he worked hard and he managed to earn that money then he has the money and the having the money is an accomplishment as you say suppose he inherited from his ancestors well then you might say he's proud of his family could say that but suppose he wins the lottery could he be proud of having so much money if the way that he got it was winning the lottery let me let me try to make this even sharper let's suppose that um a person's hired to do a job and he's given a certain production quoter he's programming and he's doing research and turning things out and there's an automatic program that that monitors his his his activities and rates his output and he gets paid terms of his output and he go weeks after week and each week he gets better better and the output gets gets larger and he starts making significant amount of money the end of the year let's say he's made $150,000 and he's very happy now suppose somebody at the end of the year his boss calls him in say listen I have something to tell you you have a rich uncle that you don't know about and your Rich Uncle cares about you and he wants to help you and he paid us to hire you and he paid us to feed you results of your productivity which aren't true so you feel good about it but really he gave us $150,000 and said hire him for a year I wanted to have $150,000 would that deflate you I think it would you got the money you could take your trip to Europe but you didn't you didn't uh make it you didn't create it it was just given to you it's hard to feel pride of something which was just given to you it's much easier to feel Pride about things which you created for yourself I'm not sure that this is universal that there couldn't be exceptions I'm a little fuzzy on the concept of Pride I'm Not Alone um but I think that Pride that that it's being an accomplish contributes to the pride that you can feel okay now let's take that point and apply it to a law that mes cies we have a responsibility for charity very far-reaching responsibility for charity and there are different levels of Charity different kinds of Charity mes has eight levels the next to best level of Charity is where the donor and recipient don't know each other it's totally Anonymous can you see why that is given what we just said no embarrass me say again no embarrassment no embarrassment the guy who's receiving charity is the guy's getting accept me for nothing and the reason we're giving him charity is because he needs it which means he can't provide for his own needs hard to be proud of that I can't earn a dime uhuh I understand that you just got a college diploma right you can't ear a dime all you can do is join a Dei test Force other than that nothing you can do um so you want it to be anonymous for first of all that the recipient shouldn't be aware the donor knows who he is because then the donor will look down on him and vice versa so now that's the next to best okay the best level the top level of the eight is giving someone a job now here's the silly trick question when you give someone a job you gave him something that is not anonymous he knows you gave him a job why would that be better he's earning his his money that's right the end of the week when he gets his check he earned it so there's no embarrassment in having the money and therefore there's no no need for an anonymity giving a person a job both supports him materially and gives him his self-respect his self-esteem his honor it's a double gift it's a double gift okay now let me shift now to a Jewish perspective there are two of many um principles of divine action two ways that deals with the world two purposes that he has in dealing with the world one is called loving kindness and the other is called strict Justice he uses both of them as I will show you they're not equal but he does use both of them let's see how they're related loving kindness and strict Justice let's imagine a transaction where someone gives someone else money could it is it possible that it should be both loving kindness and Justice in the same transaction let's see I give Ruan 500 $100 why am I doing that well let's say ruin works for me we signed the contract and the contract says you work 30 hours a week you could pay $500 I have a supervisor's report it says he worked the 30 hours so I owe him the $500 Justice demands that I give him the $500 if I don't give it to him I'm victimizing him when I give him the $500 am I expressing kindness to him I don't think so I owe it I have to pay it otherwise he could take me to court and theant that I pay it no kindness in that kindness is specifically where you do something for someone where you don't owe it to him he hasn't got any claim on it he hasn't got a right to it that's why the motivation is kindness and not Justice it seems that in a single inter interaction where aop to be it's impossible for it to be an example both of justice and kindness so if God interacts with the world with both of these both of these principles the natural thing to assume would we well sometimes one and sometimes the other maybe sometimes the person needs an interaction of justice and sometimes a person needs an interaction of kindness and they'll vary with the circumstances you could you could and that's not unreasonable but in Jewish philosophy in particular calistic philosophy we are taught that loving kindness is the only ultimate motivation for everything that God does everything is an expression of loveing kindness and sometimes loving kindness directs an action of Justice loving kindness is accomplished through Justice or loving kindness is expressed through Justice here there's a marry between loving kindness and Justice which now should seem puzzling to us as we just saw that when a gives be something it cannot be both loving kindness and Justice how can they be married how can one give birth to the other if they're contradictory in this way H contradictory in this way let's go back to my Mones my Mones said the highest level of charity it's giving someone a job isn't charity kindness isn't charity something the other person hasn't earned what is a job well a job is where you sign a contract at the end of the week the worker gets paid because there's a contract so paying him at the end of the week is Justice the kindness is in in giving him the job the kindness is in setting up an ongoing relationship of Justice yes in a single transaction it can't be both kindness and justice but kindness can motivate setting up a relationship of Justice because in the relationship of Justice you have the most Exquisite kindness to review when you give someone a job he gets a double benefit he gets money at the end of the week and he has his self-esteem his honor he has his dignity so it's a double gift interacting with him on a on a a mode of of of Justice with a job gives him that double gift so the kindness expresses itself in the setting up of the relationship at the end of the week when you pay him the $500 that's not kindness at all you signed the contract you owe it to it's signing the contract and said it up that's the idea of loving kindness now that shows you that the the idea in Jewish philosophy that loving kindness can give birth to justice is not is not an impossible idea to understand the very desire to benefit the other person motivates one to set up that kind of Justice relationship that's a model for howu runs with the world Le this on one level created the world out of loving kindness loving kindness means to give a benefit to help to to provide for to invest in to enable the other to have and become all that he can have and become the mode in which it's accomplished as you know is there's a system of mitzvos mitzvos are Commandments and the system says if you perform the command ments you'll be rewarded and if not not the system of Commandments is a system of justice God is our creator God is the word to provide us with everything we have we owe it to him and he's collecting the debt and he's saying this is what you owe me to do this why does he set up a system of a world in which there are Commandments to be fulfilled and reward of punishment which is a matter of Justice why did he set that up because he wants us to go from here to the world to come and in the world to come there'll be no effort no earning no creating no developing no free will no free will no urge to evil and there where we will receive the greatest good imaginable but he wants us to earn it he doesn't want it to come without our earnings it because if he did so it would then be it would have a demerit a blemish that we be getting it like a six-year-old getting an ice cream con we be painted as complete dependence with no um no dessert of our own so says I'm giving you the ability to earn it so that when you get it it doesn't have that demerit the words of Yi I your question a second words ofi are someone who eats something that's not his own he's embarrassed to look The Giver in the face so the fellow in the back who said embarrassment is exactly right he's embarrassed to look the giv her in the face so to avoid What's called the bread of shame to avoid the bread of shame because gives us the opportunity to earn it that's what's going on in this world yeah wouldn't um saying um that we ow or however you want to call it wouldn't that imply that he's lacking something wouldn't it imply that he's lacking something well um this is a part of the same question we ask whether God needs us right um I think there there are two things to say about that question first of all if I see say that someone needs something we feel that somehow that's a demerit a perfect being shouldn't have any needs let's push that a little bit what exactly is the degrading element in having a need I think the degrading element in having a need is being dependent on something else not being self-sufficient well let's think does having a need automatically imply not being self-sufficient suppose I need X but I'm perfectly capable all on my own with no one's help to provide X for myself that kind of need wouldn't be would not imply a dependency on something else then you have to ask why why do I need it and that would be a question we'd have to answer but the the pagam the blemish in the need the reason we don't feel comfortable saying that God has needs I think is because that would imply that he would be dependent on something else not all needs are like that not all needs are like that um now let's take the idea of perfection that's one of the key ideas and understanding what the Creator is perfection means that than which there is no better Perfection is something that couldn't be improved well I guess if something's perfect it must be good if it weren good that it can be approved by becoming good so certainly goodness is an element of perfection now let's ask equality quality of character a moral quality that we look at as valuable is there any difference between having it as a potentiality if the occasion arises then this is how I'll act because I have this good quality or actually using it actually doing it where you actually act on the quality and produce the result that the quality requires is potential goodness ideal or is actualized goodness ideal does potential goodness have a certain weakness yeah it's what you would do if you could or if you had to but you don't have to so it never gets done let's take generosity ruin is stranded on a South Sea Island all by himself well he's been taught survival skills and he's not danger of dying but there's nothing there to which he can express his generosity okay if you're Peter Singer he can express his generosity to the to the animals no animals he's living on coconuts and if you think you got to express generosity to the trees we'll talk about some other subjects some other time there's no opportunity for generosity to act so from our point of view potential generosity isn't as valuable as actualized generosity so here if God has goodness it won't be satisfactory for it to be just potential goodness it needs to be actualized goodness how's he going to actualize the goodness going to actualize the goodness by there're being those for whom he can provide they're being those to whom he can give so that his generosity and his sympathy and his care and his love can be actualized so he creates the world in order to actualize the qualities that are elements of his Perfection because otherwise they won't be actualized it's an expression of his Perfection to create a world in which those qualities can be can be actualized so the key the key Point here is what does he need it for what does he need it for not does he need it but what does he need it for and here there's a simple divide although it's more complicated if you go further but simple divide do I need it for me or do I need it for something or someone other than me if I need it for me that means I lack it I'm missing it and I'm dependent on having it but suppose I need it for the other because that's how I'm oriented I'm oriented to do for the other and my orientation my project to do for the other requires it to be an other otherwise there aren't any others and that I can't do for the other but then it's not that I'm lacking something for myself it's something in me in my nature to be expressed needs another to be given to and that's not going to be a a failure of perfection on the contrary it's going to be an expression of perfection so I think that kind of need is something which we don't have to worry about in terms of associating with God I think we have to they have to press the somebody hand was up over here did I did I miss it no okay so now now the situation is to avoid the the the bread of Shame there is a question here it's a clever question which students sometimes arrive at let's try to go through it again and see if you can't pick up where there might be a little a little slip um God creates the world why because because he wants to benefit he wants to give the good well just create it and give the good yeah but if I do that I do it for a human being then there's going to be a certain shame certain embarrassment built into the receiving the good not having earned it I want the give that I that gives be a perfect good with no blish with no detracting Factor so because sets it up in such a way that we go through a period of earning it so when we receive it we can feel that we earned it and then there's no embarrassment and no shame in receiving it is yeah why would it be embarrassing just make it so there's no embarrassment say again why would there be embarrassment or shame just make it so there's no embarrassment or shame oh yeah why don't create Us in such a way that we don't feel embarrassment and shame we could be horses you feed a horse in the evening he doesn't care whether he galloped all day or pulled a cart all day or lazed around the whole day doesn't bother him make us like horses we don't feel shame we don't feel embarrassment and then just take us into the world to come and don't and don't require us to earn it I think that's a terrific question this idea of the bread of Shame is very widely found in our literature very widely found including one of the great Jewish philosophers mosato who was a great capitalist that's not a contradiction in the dasos writes this idea word for word but here's a a puzzling thing he wrote another book called The D hasem the way of God and chapter 2 he talks about Free Will and why Free Will is important and what free will accomplishes and he doesn't mentioned the bread of Shame at all not at all doesn't hit to it has a whole explanation without using the idea of brother shame at all when I first read that I thought to myself why the bread of Shame is very widespread very popular with great scholarly credentials and now he writes this whole completely different uh explanation and then I realized that the the explanation which I'm calling the second one doesn't have this objection because it's not bread of shame because it's not to avoid the shame you'll feel in the world to come because you didn't earn it that's not the explanation at all the question why didn't God create us without shame doesn't arise because it's not shame that's doing it so I thought H maybe that means that his explanation in the way of God has the virtue of avoiding this problem and then maybe we have to look and see how the two explanations fit together because you can't just cancel out the bread of Shame explanation it's great very popular in our literature and see that may maybe the one in the way of God is a deeper explanation and thereby avoids the problem of why don't you create us without shame so what I'm going to do now is try to give you at least the headlines of the second chapter in the way of God and you'll see that the um the the question of of Shame is not not mentioned it's not not used and then soon we have time I'll try to put the two of them together God is creating the world out of loving kindness the project is to create good to create creatures to whom will who will possess good what is good well if God is perfection then God is the greatest good so God then should be creating creatures who will be who will be what gods other gods sort of Gods like Godlike or something to give them the best possible good he's not going to be content with a second second rate good we're talking about a being that's perfect so what he do what he should be doing is creating creatures to whom he can give Godly goodness now the r says but look there's a built of limitation on that because one element of God's goodness and Perfection is that he is entirely self-sufficient as we said before doesn't rely on anything else nothing else makes him supports him um improves him elevates him he is totally self-contained that's part of what it is to be God be totally self-contained well um could we be each of us some of us totally self-contained it's a big problem with that idea isn't there we are After All Creatures we're created by God that's not self-contained sorry he creates us he maintains our existence continuously We Exist because he's pouring Divine energy into us he's pouring Divine concern into us so we're certainly not self-contained self self self determined well is there a way to carve out a little space a little chunk in our lives that could be self-contained self-defined something that's ours something that he isn't giving us there's a name for that what's the name for It Free Will Free Will Free Will means free from Divine causation it means something that he doesn't make happen of course he gives us the capacity of free will but the decisions aren't decisions that he makes the're decisions that we make when we make a free decision we create something that is ours because we really made it when we do that we become similar to God he's totally absolutely and necessarily self-defined we are partially and contingently didn't have to be that way partially contingently self-defined but we have a self-defined aspect which is similar to his being self-defined nothing else in the creation has that no squirrels have it no Galaxies have it no angels have it they are given their nature by God they are strictly a creation evil being is a creation with a creative ability in in exercising that creative ability the human being becomes similar to The Creator now let's review the Creator is perfection so something similar to The Creator shares in something which is related to the Divine Perfection one element of God's perfection Perfection is being self-contained self-determined self-defined human being has some of that that's what free will is for free will is for enabling the human being to become similar to The Creator since the Creator is the greatest goodness the Creator wants to give to the creature his goodness as much as could be possessed one element in giving to the creature some of God's goodness is to give us the capacity to be to Su ex to some extent self-defined as he is self-defined so the exercise of Free Will and the use of free will to self-define is what enables us to possess that greatest goodness that God wants to give us did you hear the word embarrassment yet did you hear the word uh um shame yet not mentioned this is an entirely different project and now using this idea of being self-defined it branches out into many other applications with with which we're all familiar one of the things we're supposed to do is do good be good become good we talked about virtue we talked about improving our character so that if a person is um merciful if a person is kind if a person is just if he has those those qualities of character He Is possessing characteristics that are similar to Divine characteristics and in that way he possesses more of the good that is divine and that's why God created us to possess as much of the Divine good as we can now notice that those moral characteristics depend essentially on Free Will a creature who has no free will can't have any of those characteristics let me illustrate let's say I program my my computer with a virtual agent to uh search the internet and gathered together information of a certain type and every Thursday night I have a list of email recipients so there people all over the globe Friday morning when they wake up in their in their inbox there's this information from goly free of charge now suppose somebody writes me a letter and he says you know I can't get over it your computer is so generous your computer is so kind your computer sends me this free information which is very useful to me all that well you know I really am grateful to your computer I hope that sounds a little odd to you computers kind computers generous not really maybe I'm kind of generous you know I bought the program and I'm paying electricity but the computer is just a machine something that operates an automatic pilot something that's programmed something that's purely mechanical can't be kind it can do things to benefit other people but can't do it out of kindness kindness isn't in its repertoire it isn't in its being kindness Mercy uh gener generosity and other moral qualities are only applicable to a being that has free will and makes free decisions and weighs up and can make wrong decisions and sometimes puts effort into making right decisions that's where moral qualities come from so giving us Free Will has a double effect number one it enables us to be like the Creator in being partly self-defined and also it enables us to acquire the other moral characteristics which make is more like the Creator that's the project of free will the project is to enable us to become similar to by the way those of you who have had a brush with Jewish text beginning of par Noah says a told us no these are the things that Noah brought into the world Generations in the sense of generating and bringing into the world and talks about his being um Walking with God and being uh uh right righteous and and perfect or pure right but there's one word which many commentators don't comment on it says a told us Noah Noah is right it says these are the Productions of Noah Noah which means he's his own production he's producing himself what the Torah gives us here is the capacity for self-c creativity imagine a person the age of 40 and you get to know him and say wow I see that you have these and these these characteristics how did you come to be that way if he says look if you had seen me when I was 17 You' have seen something very different but I worked on it I worked on it I decided I want to become a certain type of person and it wasn't easy um there is this story I don't know it's really in the midash but story that someone found that an artist that painted a picture of Moses when he was a when he was a youth and he looked like a robber don't think Moses was born Moses Moses worked to become Moses that's why when Moses is first introduced into the Torah you don't know who his parents are unlike almost every other hero the entire Hebrew Bible when he's first introduced his parents are Anonymous a few chapters later it tells you exactly what his genealogy is and all the rest but not when he's introduced the T doesn't want you to think he's a product of his parents of course his parents had an effect on him it's not as if he's independent but the fact that he became what he became is because of the effort that he had to put into his own self- creativity yeah what would be the point of the Torah at all if we didn't have free well what would be the point of the Torah at all we didn't have free will well I think the question is right but let's just sort of scout it a little bit I said about 17 minutes ago or maybe it was 13 or I don't um that in the world to come there's no free will that doesn't mean that the world to come is worthless it's uh somehow secondary or could we could just skip it and and do without it there's no yet there's no evil inclination uh Free Will requires a a draw to the good and a draw to the bad the draw to the good is in the soul the draw to the bad is in the body we'll talk about that and because they are in conflict with one another that's why there's free will in the world to come there's no draw to evil so there's no free will so it can't be essential to human being that we have free will it can be a essential to human being that we go through a period in which we have free will but it can't be essential to human being because we are humanly being in the world to come we don't have free will so now the idea is what does want to happen in the world to come well what he wants to happen is a certain communion with people who have become Godlike enough to be able to relate to him in a very special way and becoming Godlike requires free will because otherwise we won't be similar to God at all in any way by the way having just said what I said I heard from my my oldest son I'll take a question one second my older son that that that I quoted to you before he who eats from from that which is not his own is embarrassed to look The Giver in the face my son said don't forget about looking him in the face why does this say he's embarrassed to look him in the face because a face Toof face relationship is a special kind of relationship talk about a face t- face meeting in Hebrew they talk about a four-eyed meeting of a meeting of Four Eyes ARB Night Eyes to eyes a face tof face meeting is where your whole self is on the line and his whole self is on the line and you're relating to each other in in in an essential away if a person gets that which is not his he can't have a face-to-face relationship with the Creator because he's too different from the Creator face-to-face relationship requires shared qualities not identity obviously but shared qualities the mo the medium of it is shared qualities so that's what the world to come is supposed to be that kind of face Toof face relationship which we make possible by acting with our free will to become like the Creator that's this message of the second chapter of the of the way of God it's a very deep business very deep chapter I struggled with it read it many times this this is just skimming off the top uh yeah you got a question um it wasn't me yeah yeah sorry right I was gonna ask uh does uh do you think in general does having more free will keep you closer to God in terms of having say we're doing rather than doing automatically without realizing or just in general the capacity to be kind and the capacity to do these other things where otherwise might be unintentional okay you're you're asking a tricky question it's a nice it's a nice question if there are certain qualities that I'm born with I spent a year in Yeshiva where there were British boys and American boys and Israeli boys there was a big difference do I have to spell it out to you in terms of interpersonal character the British boys were on top American boys were okay the Israelis were it's difficult their cultures program in them a starting point in life with different characteristics and in that respect there was a lot to learn from the British boys so that's one thing and there I think you're right the fact that I do certain things because my parents trained me that way or brought me up that way I get very little credit for that if any but suppose I face a certain character Challenge and I work hard on it and I have I get to the point where by working hard I've consistent success to the point where I program in myself a behavior and it becomes automatic I don't lose out when it becomes automatic ah you're not using your free will anymore because my free will creat Creed it for me and that according to many sources is the highest success the highest success the M says that B has lost his Free Will and that was the highest success because he trained and programmed his body to be in in in synonymous with his Soul's orientation and his Soul's desires the Soul's will that way there's no competing element I said before the soul is the the good inclination the body is the evil inclination we spoke about this the blindness of the body just Wants What It Wants What It Wants it and you can train the body and Elevate the body you know it's sort of like like training a horse you've probably seen uh videos of of wild horses and what people have to do to tame them to ride them while they're wild and endure the and out um last the horse with endurance to the point where it becomes exhausted and then I don't know how many times you have to do it in a little detail but I've seen seen the idea and then and then it will then it will take a rider and we'll take a rider happily and you can have friendly you know friendly interactions so to speak with the horse you know can you can pet the horse the horse will appreciate it um the horse isn't losing out because it lost its wildness the horse is is benefiting here too you you think your your body is like a wild horse and you want the body to be guided managed programmed to be able to to carry out what the soul wants it to do and when you do that your free will has created a situation in which the free will no longer exists that's the ideal accomplishment as I said before the world to come no one has free will so it can't be that without free will you you're lost question is when and under what conditions so I think that together with appreciating how precious Free Will is we have to understand the Free Will is a means not an end it's a tool to accomplish something and the greatest accomplishment is to elevate you the point so to the point where Body and Soul are in tune with one another because the body has received so to speak programming from the soul is receive the vision of the soul and then the two go in in in Partnership and then there's no struggle anymore yeah um in terms of uh like human beings being the only physical I guess animals you could call it that have this this free will that we're able to choose that's right um there are I guess arguments that people make in terms of type of monkey species types of Apes that show some sort of Consciousness or some form of understanding or thinking or choosing um what do you say to that kind of not sure if you've seen any of these experience I've seen it and I've been through it and I philosophy of mind is one of the areas that I studied it with great detail now you said that I think in a very beautiful way we were talking about Free Will and you said what about these studies of animals that seem to show Consciousness yeah but that's not free will understanding uhhuh but that's not Free Will and then at the very end you got to and choosing you think you you realize yourself that Consciousness doesn't imply Free Will and understanding doesn't apply Free Will Free Will is another quality so what what is the what is the difference between what I said I'll tell you the difference the key difference myones says this clearly and unfortunately in in some translations of myones they just just get it dead wrong I'm not saying that because you look it up in in English you could you get a misimpression the key to Free Will is that when a per when a person does something he could at that moment under those conditions have done something else what he did didn't have to happen that way am Mones says clearly of course I'm I'm reading the Hebrew the Hebrew is a translation from the Arabic Matalan is an expert in Arabic but animals have will human beings have free will animals act but when they do something there was nothing else they could do so um and that's that's respect to which human beings alone I don't think you have any evidence in the behavior of of animal which needs to be interpreted you can interpret and over interpret widely and and it's a fault very widespread in this in these studies but the um the there's no nothing in an animal behavior which requires the idea that when it did X it could have done y so all of the if put in that situation every single one of the test subjects would have done the same thing in if the conditions were all the same no what you do is partly determined by what you are that's for sure right let's imagine that a person is blind put in the same situation not going to do with the person with side species let's say even so well I'm talking about a blind person and a and aided person they're both in the same species right both human Le I check no it's it's it's not it's not it's that this creature under in this circumstance at this time when it actually happened there it could have gone otherwise is uh maybe this is an over simplification of an example but what about like a dog and you know like the two owners like you know go go to different ends of a room and call the dog doesn't the dog have a choice on which one to go to what in the dog's Behavior would make you think that it has a choice it went to one didn't go to the other to say that it had a choice would mean that under those very same circumstances it could have done done the opposite random it did one thing what would lead you to think that it could have done otherwise right back uh you said earlier that humans have free will which ultimately uh comes down to no divine intervention in causation does that also mean that there's no divine interv intervention in the effect no doesn't mean that that's a very important distinction we have the freedom to choose but after that not the way I'm way I'm picturing it there are other ways to talk about it there discusss to have I'm picturing it after my choice is made then is the one who Engineers all the consequences when I decide when my hand goes up because I decide that my hand should go up because makes it go up we spoke about this the other day I don't know which group is here what what days talk about everything being a partnership and everything that you do you have the decision-making capacity and he's the one who makes the world operate according to your decision so uh the only point at which he's left room for us is in the decision-making process yeah what in the Human Action requires us to reach that this that he could have chosen the other way like as opposed to the to the animal well um in the case of the human being it's self- knowledge I mean we know that of ourselves we feel regret when we did something I should have done otherwise obviously we are we are saying about ourselves could have done otherwise if I couldn't have done otherwise then I wouldn't have had regret but what outside of us because we are trying to get something outside of the dog yeah what's outside of us is the listener to whom I talk and I tell and he knows from my words that he experiences exactly the same thing that I experienced right no reason whatsoever to think that a dog experiences anything like that now mark my words and here people I said we have no reason to think that they have it I didn't say they don't have it I just say we have no reason to think that they have it so you can have an open mind they can wait for the evidence to appear but there's certainly nothing in their behavior that requires that kind of interpretation and I will just just make a to end this I'll just point out that over interpreting what animals and other creatures do is a is a very common uh problem um there was an experiment that was done not sure now whether but the experiment the way it was done gives the illustration of this kind of over interpretation there's supposed to be a wasp called the digger wasp that kills spiders digs a hole buries them and comes back and eats them when the spider is H when the when the WASP is hungry four for uh planning for the future in a wasp that was really considered to be quite remarkable wasp a pretty low down on the evolutionary tree which is also probably irrelevant because crows are smarter than chimpanzees in certain ways but okay so uh the experimental was did the following the the WASP kills a spider drags it up to a certain place digs a hole pushes the the spider in covers it up with dirt comes back later so when when the was does this it's digging the hole the experimenter pulled the spider dead spider away from the hole oh the WASP goes back and gets the spider pulls it up the hole and starts to dig well the vicious brutal experimentor pulls the spider away from the hole and the WASP stops and goes and gets the Spider goes back to dig and that repeats until the WASP dies of hunger oh so the was wasn't preparing for the future the was was following a hard hard programmed uh re uh routine with no thoughts of preparing for the future otherwise when I got really hungry it would just eat this the spider that had in front of it so have to be very very careful about these things um the idea that that chip have language has been long debunked even and there again they they over interpreted what they what they saw I just saw an article now about dogs do dogs feel guilt and if you have had a dog when I was a child we did have a dog you can see behavior in the dog that looks very much like guilt behavior in people the dog crouches into itself it shrinks down and whippers and so forth and so on the article is written by a woman who happens to be an expert in dog behavior and said no the dog's afraid of getting hit that's all dog anticipates getting hit and and doesn't want to get hit Fe guilt with morals values failure you know that's just overinterpreting so you have to be very very careful about the problem of overinterpreting with you all sorts of and and by the way there's a whole ideology in this there's something called human exceptionalism which preaches that human beings are significantly different from everything else and the others want to say that that's a challenge Evolution hey we didn't evolve from foxes M that's big dead everything's got to evolved right so the more links you can find between human beings and animals the more background you have the idea that we're just over better developed animals and if these links break then your ideology is in trouble that's why they pay studies they want books written there was a Jewish professor at Harvard who was fired because he faked his data to get results like that that maybe they have some kinds of moral values the the money is in showing continuity that means when someone gives evidence for continuity be suspicious because that's where the money is have a wonderful time with the mentors thank you so much