I saw this old Alex O Conner clip about free will, and he asks the viewer if you were to go back in time, with all the matter the exact same, same neurons and environment etc, if you would/could make a different choice? Alex said he thought it wasnt possible to make a different choice given all the same circumstances in this thought experiment.

Recently alex has been engaging more with pansychism and idealism, how do you think he would navigate this conversation of free will? Could there possibly be different mental substrates or 'spaces' for lack of a better word, even when all the matter around is the exact same? Under the framework of matter being fundamental, that thought experiment works, but if mind is fundamental I feel like it breaks down.

If everything is physically the same, its not necessarily indicative that everything would happen the same way or the mental space is the exact same leading to the same outcomes

I know he can run his channel however he wants and I'm not hating on him but damn I wish he'd do more video essays. It feels like every episode now is a podcast episode. It's been 6 months since his last video essay. I miss his old content, the trolley problems, the philosophical hot takes, the deep dives into random stuff. What do you guys think? Any content preferences or gripes you have?

I had this idea rolling in my head. For most people in the world, bad things are bad, not really because somebody told them they're bad, but because they have this innate feeling that it's bad. For example, most people feel kind of yucky about murder. You could logically give them reasons why murder is justified or even morally good, but it doesn't change the actual feeling they have. And I imagine most of their moral positions essentially are based on this internal feeling they're getting.

So my idea then is, what if, there used to be people who's inner feelings were completely different, thus causing their morality to be essentially backwards to ours, but all of their attempts at society and civilization simply didn't survive. Thus applying evolutionary pressure to societies, who end up with moral systems where wanton violence and murder is bad for example? Which would mean, the morals we have do not come from god or some external source, but rather are refined by evolution from some baseline randomness.

Alex is a very good speaker. But I genuinely can’t fully wrap my head around why this talk had to be laid out. It’s like people at 3 years old didn’t realize that other animals like snails have a completely different experience that is inconceivable to us. When I tell people that I lean toward Panpsychism or idealism or Russellian monism, they laugh and picture atoms worrying about their taxes or some other anthropomorphic idea of subjective experience forced onto things that don’t have brains💀. Like no, the plant doesn’t feel pain and the table doesn’t feel your fingers when you hit it. It baffles me how people have such a limited analytic imagination. The ridiculous thing to me about a physicalist view of consciousness is that you are committed to the view that there was the very first ancestor to have the very first qualitative experience, whose parents were in some sense philosophical zombies. If the first replicators (RNA molecules) did not have any subjective experience, but humans today do, then that conclusion logically must follow. But then as somebody that isn’t a dualist but also takes the stance that only some specific types of material processes have qualitative properties, you have to realize that the qualitative adaption served absolutely no mechanical purpose or darwinian advantage, since material changes are the only physically interactive thing. Now that to me is an extraordinary leap of faith. If we’re talking about who’s view is has the least surface level intuition, I would have to argue that it is definitely physicalism because they are committed to these deducible conclusions.

I love how candid Alex is with his thought processes and commitment to honest enquiry but this feels like a problematic (and easily risible) position. Is the position not just living on 'vibes'?

Perhaps there is no objective morality (which many desperately seek) but this is subjectivity -perhaps an honest position- that surrenders all hope in a notion of ethics.

One's feelings can change and be manipulated (or even mass engineered). Feelings cannot be a justification. I imagine Alex would argue that underlying the frameworks people use there are just feelings but there are examples of religions directly addressing this (such as the story of Abraham being prepared to sacrifice his son in total devotion to god).

Feels like Alex is back to square one, which leads me to think there really cannot be any rhyme or reason we can find (or that wandering outside of religion cannot avoid devolving into following one's whims).

Would appreciate anyone with a better understanding sharing how Alex's position is anything short of just resigning oneself to following one's gut through the absurdity of existence?

I've been watching cosmic skeptic for a while now, and I've always wondered how he was able to, for lack of a better word, be so smart.

I understand he has a degree in theism and philosophy, but a lot of his knowledge on topics and his general speaking patterns are out of this world.

Are there any resources I can learn to be as well-informed as him and wellspoken?