Hello everyone, I am Anthony
Welcome to my channel
Today we continue to discuss
The relationship between free will and genes
In the previous video
We said
Many friends have this feeling of emptiness.
I feel that everything
It's all determined by neural mechanisms or genes.
I am not the initiator
The initiated
The self is nothing but an illusion that is manipulated
Genes are everywhere.
The dominant entity
Then we mainly from the perspective of philosophy
To explore this view
That is to say, human spirit is reflexive
You can't use that kind of mechanical thinking.
Directly applied
Free will cannot be proven by science.
It can't be falsified
If human free will
Entity that can be attributed to a substance
Then you will fall into the dilemma of infinite tracing back
certainly
This is a very complex and vast topic.
It is worth discussing again and again in the future
Then this video
Let's talk about this from the perspective of genetic science.
Why this determinism is problematic
Before the video starts, let me say
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Topics you want to discuss and consult with me
You can contact my email to make an appointment
So let's get back to today's topic.
In fact, after the last video was released
Some netizens wrote me comments
Expressing different opinions
A major counterargument is that
With the advancement of certain scientific research
People found
Free will is just a complex phenomenon
Determinism is still true
I think this objection is unreasonable.
Because we have already said
The problem of free will
It is not a proposition that can be falsified by science.
Because it is not the object of scientific research at all
That is, observable and measurable.
Repeatable and operable
Free will involves a person's innermost subjective experience
This subjective experience
It can never be observed or measured from the outside.
You can only observe the person's expression.
What did you say?
What is his inner world like?
But you can't see it from a first-person perspective.
Completely grasp and predict the other party
Let’s think about this.
If scientists claim
Found a brain area or neural mechanism
Can prove that humans have free will
That actually shows that he misunderstood what free will is.
Because of this free will
has been reduced to something observable from the outside,
The object of control and operation
More importantly
If a person really thinks
All your spiritual phenomena
They are all determined by physiological and physical laws.
Then he doesn't need to argue with others.
Even whether he himself believes in determinism
It's meaningless
It's all an illusion
Because believing or not believing is determined
There is no distinction between high and low
It's just a pure physical event.
So we say
The reason why many people can easily interpret science is that
People have no free will
In fact, science has not really discovered this
Rather, the parties use the laws of natural objects
The human spirit is free of metaphors and analogies
Some scientific worldviews and methodologies
Directly migrated to the spiritual realm of human beings
In fact, many people think so.
Precisely because
They first had
"I have no roots in the world,
The subjective experience of "insignificance"
Then we can find the evidence from science.
When science cannot observe itself,
When it comes to subjective phenomena such as freedom
I thought these things didn't exist.
but
Although science cannot prove that humans have free will
This philosophical proposition
But the development of science does have such a trend
That is to pay more and more attention to the role of subjective experience
Subjectivity is becoming a
Variables with increasing practical value
For example, in genetics
A traditional view is that
The characteristics, personality, disease, intelligence, etc. of an organism
Most are directly determined by genes
The environment is seen as a supporting external factor
Such as sunlight, nutrition
It's just an external factor that determines how tall you are.
But there is a limit to how high you can grow.
It's genetically programmed.
However
With the development of molecular biology and neuroscience
People found
The relationship between genes and environment
More complicated than we thought
They are not simply additive.
They penetrate each other all the time.
Constantly interacting, shaping each other, and relying on each other
for example
Evans et al.
Expression profiles in the paper
during honeybeast determination中
It was mentioned
The hierarchy of bees in the hive
Depends on how the bees are treated
The DNA sequence of the queen bee and the worker bee is the same
No specific gene
can determine what a bee will become
Research Findings
Queen Bee and Worker Bees
Gene expression profiles differ dramatically during early development
that is
What really causes differentiation is the way genes are expressed.
Rather than the gene itself
For bees
This differentiation is mainly influenced by diet
If a larva eats normal feed for the first few days
This causes them to express genes associated with worker bees.
And if the larvae eat royal jelly
Then he will activate a different set of genes
More likely to become queen bee
That is to say
Although the genes themselves are destined
But which genes are expressed?
And the order of this expression
But it was not destined
The relationship between human genes and environment
Of course, it is much more complicated than bees.
for example
Bohman in a 1996 study of Swedish adoption cases
Just found out
There is no simple criminal gene
Cause a person to commit a crime
Children whose parents have criminal tendencies
If adopted by well-functioning adoptive parents
They often do not develop criminal behavior
If the biological parents have no criminal history
But the child was adopted by a family with serious problems
Then the child may still show criminal tendencies
And if a child
Having both biological parents with criminal tendencies
and adoptive parents
Then his crime rate will increase dramatically.
This shows that criminal behavior is not linear.
Activated by genes
It is evoked in a complex system.
Only when the environment constitutes the triggering conditions
Potential risks emerge
The environment itself is the determining variable
It is not an appendage of genes
therefore
We say that genes alone cannot determine a person's destiny
even
They are far from being able to control people's psychology and behavior.
If we look at it from a molecular level
A person's genes develop from genotype to phenotype
This involves multiple complex intermediary layers.
As Eric R. Kandel writes in the article
A New Intellectual Framework for Psychiatry
The DNA sequence of a gene is transcribed and translated
Ultimately, it is converted into a protein with a specific amino acid sequence
Proteins participate in and regulate cell behavior
Indirect effects on neural circuits
This is the physical basis of individual psychological functions
However, human psychological functions, subjective experience
It also has the ability to reversely shape the physiological basis
for example
Learning new things causes certain genes to activate
These activated genes
Can regulate subsequent protein synthesis
Helps build more synapses
Forming long-term memory
That is to say
The relationship between human psychological activities and gene expression
It is a dynamic interactive relationship
The nonlinear one-way decision relationship
Psychology and biology are not two distinct levels
It is the representation of the same process at different levels.
They nest and regulate each other.
Although people's psychological activities
Can be understood and analyzed at the molecular level
But this does not mean
The former can be completely reduced to the latter
for example
A person feels happy
Although some neurotransmitters can be traced
For example, the release of dopamine
But happiness is not dopamine
"Happiness" is dopamine in a specific neural network
When it takes effect
After interacting with memory, experience, and context
An integrated subjective experience
This subjective experience
It can also reverse the physiological state
Rather than simply being determined
Using a “dopamine high”
To explain why someone is happy now
It's like using this because there is ink on the paper
To explain why this novel is so touching
Many people tend to eliminate the value of subjectivity
They think there is no inherent meaning in all this
can be reduced to the genetic and molecular level
Although at the molecular level
To explain and predict human psychological phenomena
This idea is actually so complicated that it is completely unworkable
But some people would think
This is simply because the computing power is not strong enough
Technology is not advanced enough
in other words
As long as you have enough ability
You can always get closer
I think
This is somewhat similar to the relationship between geocentrism and heliocentrism.
In geocentric terms
The Earth is the Center of the Universe
The absolute subject
If we use this idea
To understand the motion of other celestial bodies
will cause the orbits of other celestial bodies
It becomes very complicated
However
If we understand the earth and the sun as two entities
Recognized the Sun's organization and core position
The whole system will become very intuitive and concise
Same
When we learn to recognize and discover the meaning of subjectivity
Learn to see things from the perspective of the person involved
Look into his inner world
Then many mental phenomena of human beings
It will become easier to understand
Just like the planets around the sun,
Presenting a structural beauty
More importantly
When we discuss the complex interaction of genes and environment
We usually default
This environment
It is an observable and objective environment
For example, the feeding conditions of bees
However, in terms of human psychological growth
There is also an environment
It is difficult to objectively observe and define
But more influential
That is
How the client subjectively experiences and perceives this environment
This inner environment or psychological environment
Often more important than the external objective environment
The most direct manifestation is
Individuals in attachment relationships
Subjective sense of safety and acceptance
Able to reversely shape and influence gene expression pathways
For example, some studies have found
Among alcoholics, gamblers, people with eating disorders, etc.
The proportion of people with a specific allele gene such as A1 or A1A2
Significantly higher
But more importantly
Trauma experienced by the individual in early attachment relationships
These genes are often activated
Weakening their ability to adapt to interpersonal relationships
To prepare them for the stress and trauma that follows
Showing more vulnerability
This means
The relationship between the child and his or her primary attachment figure
The relationship formed
It not only affects their current sense of security
It will leave a deep mark on the genetic level.
This reminds us
Regarding a person's mental state
We should not only focus on external
Objective reality
We should pay more attention to the reality perceived by the parties involved.
People's subjective experience will filter the so-called objective reality
For example, a very beautiful woman
People around me always criticize and judge my appearance
So her level of anxiety about her appearance
Often higher than a person who doesn't look very good,
But people who have received a lot of positive feedback
Even if a person lives in a wealthy family
But if he is always indoctrinated by his parents
“We’ve paid a lot for you.”
Or emphasize the idea that "money is hard to earn" and so on.
Then this person's self-perception
It is entirely possible that they are very poor and destitute.
The objective economic status of the original family
It cannot be directly predicted
The client’s sense of financial and economic security
When we realize
Subjective experience
Feedback and regulatory effects on physiological mechanisms
We have found the physiological basis of psychotherapy
That is
In a safe, accepting and reliable interactive space
Through corrective emotional experiences
Remodeling and renewing neural circuits
Helping clients gain self-understanding
and other people's mental abilities
And this better interpersonal relationship and interactive environment
The bottom line
Each of us can exert subjective initiative
To find construction and creation
A person may not be able to change his parents immediately.
Changing society, changing childhood trauma
But he can choose who to be with in the future
Choose how to interact with the world
He can change the environment by
To indirectly change yourself
For example, consciously stay away from devaluation, suppression,
Consume your environment and social circle
Strive to be in a space of kindness and growth
Even if you can't change your current situation for the time being
You can also keep a diary, talk to AI, etc.
Build a "psychological safety zone" for yourself first
Let yourself experience being heard and understood
This is equivalent to
My free will is rewriting my genes
Although the genes themselves cannot be changed
But it can change the phenotype of genes
Changing your neural circuits
therefore
When some friends say it's my genes that keep me alive
It is genes that make me choose to eat and sleep
I have no free will
We should be aware
This is actually a personification.
He wasn't discussing science.
Rather, it conveys a religious or mythological concept.
In this concept
Genetic material or particles
As if it has will and purpose
Has direct control over the human mind
This is a method that combines biology or physics
To theological performance
The parties tried to borrow some scientific concepts
To meet a religious psychological need
That is, for all your actions
Give a seemingly certain, grand,
A metaphysical and irresistible explanation
For example, the statement that matter determines consciousness
But this is essentially a theological metaphor.
This can also explain
Why is China materialistic and atheistic?
Claiming to be against superstition, against religion, and to be scientific
But the superstition and worship it created
But it is more blind and crazy than ordinary religions
Because in this materialism
Human free will does not exist
All psychological states, cultural phenomena, social systems
They are all manifestations of class nature or historical laws.
However
Free will is the foundation of rationality and critical thinking
Man is recognized to have free will
Only then can we be proactive, open and think
When a person suppresses dimensions of autonomy and individuality
This energy will accumulate in the collective subconscious.
Eventually it broke out in the form of mass hysteria
That's all for today's video
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