He wants to and he tried to—at a speaking engagement at Williams U. But if he is a meat puppet, well, meat has no opinions:
Consider evolutionary biologist Jerry Coyne ’s recent assertion at a talk at Williams University in Maryland that free will doesn’t exist and that all human actions are fully determined by material processes—biochemistry, neurophysiology, evolution, and such…
If we are just meat, as evolutionary biologist Jerry Coyne insists, we cannot have a true opinion of the matter. Meat is neither right nor wrong. To have an opinion about free will implies that we accept it.
Michael Egnor, “Meat has no opinions” at Mind Matters News
Some of Michael Egnor’s other pieces on free will:
Can physics prove there is no free will? No, but it can make physicists incoherent when they write about free will
Does “alien hand syndrome” show that we don’t really have free will?
How can mere products of nature have free will?
Does brain stimulation research challenge free will?
Is free will a dangerous myth?
and
The interesting thing is that you can’t prove free will without controlling for millions (of billions) of other factors in the decision making process.
The really interesting thing is Eddie will never support what was posted in comment 1.
You also can’t disprove it without doing the same
AaronS1978 – quite. That’s why I think these arguments (like those around whether there’s a soul) are a bit silly.
If there were no free will among humans and humans are nothing more than animals, why did Pavlov get such different results from testing children than animals?
Can Michael Egnor become actually pro-evolution and anti-ID/creationism just by an effort of will? Doesn’t free will mean that you can change even your bedrock beliefs whenever you choose?
Ed George claims that,
AaronS1978 then comments,
Then Bob O’H chimes in,
Well first off, it is important to note that theories can only be proven to be true in so far as the precision of our scientific instruments will allow us to prove them to be true, i.e. measurement accuracy. For instance, Special Relativity, General Relativity, Quantum Electrodynamics and Quantum Mechanics, are all proven to be true to almost absurd levels of precision in so far as measurement accuracy will allow.
To give a glimpse of just how insanely precise the measurement of 120 standard deviations is for Leggett’s Inequality,,,
It is also interesting to point out that Darwinian evolution simply has no experimental confirmation like this. As David Berlinski noted,
Secondly, in science there is no such thing as “100% absolute certainty”, i.e. 100% ‘proof’, that a certain theory is undeniably true. There is always the possibility, however tenuous, that a certain theory will be falsified by some future measurement. In fact, this principle was clearly highlighted the other day, right here on UD, when News highlighted this article,
In other words, Experimental physicists will always be trying to improve measurement accuracy in their experiments in order to try to disprove some aspect of a certain scientific theory. It is the nature of the game.
For the layman, might I just state the obvious fact that once a theory has reached a certain level of ‘absurd precision. i.e. 13 or so decimal places, and has also given us many modern inventions, i.e. cell phones, computers, lasers, etc.. as quantum mechanics has done, might I just offer the ‘suggestion’ that it might be safe to say that that theory is in all likelihood true?
Also notice this particular caveat in all this, we cannot, as far as experimental physics itelf is concerned, ever be 100% certain that a certain theory is undeniably true, i.e. proven, but we can be certain that a theory has been falsified by experimental evidence. i.e. disproven. As Einstein himself noted,
In fact that principle highlighted by Einstein himself is exactly why Popper’s falsification criteria is such a important criteria in science for judging whether a theory is even to be considered scientific or not.
And it is also important to note that, since Darwinists simply refuse to accept any of the many falsifying evidences against their theory, then that means that Darwinian evolution, at least how Darwnists themselves treat their theory, “does not speak about reality”, and therefore does not even qualify as a scientific theory in the first place, (again, at least how Darwinists themselves treat their theory).
Now let’s get back to free will itself. Darwinian evolution, since it is based on naturalism, denies the existence of free will altogether. Whereas on the other hand, Intelligent Design, since it obviously holds ‘agent and/or intelligent causality’ to be true, holds that free will must exist in some meaningful sense.
Moreover, the Intelligent Design Advocate can appeal directly to evidence from both neuroscience and quantum mechanics to prove that free will is true, (and again, in so far as measurement accuracy will allow, and especially where quantum mechanics itself is concerned))
In quantum mechanics, free will is confirmed to be true for an astonishing “96% of the space-time volume of the past light cone”
As should be needless to say, that “96% of the space-time volume of the past light cone” is a fairly impressive bit of “controlling for millions (of billions) of other factors in the decision making process” in order to scientifically prove the reality of free will.
In fact. Atheistic Naturalists are now stuck with the extremely absurd proposition of ‘superdeterminism’. Which is the belief that all of their present actions are not the resuly of their own free will but were instead somehow ‘suerdetermined’ prior to the creation of the universe itself approx. 14 billion years ago.
To which I say, if you truly believe that your free will choices were ‘superdetermined’ all the way back at the big bang, then all I can say is welcome to Christianity since ultra-strict Calvinists have, for centuries, held to a ‘superdeterminism’ view of reality.
Moreover, the Intelligent Design advocate can also appeal to quantum mechanics itself to falsify the Darwinist’s belief that nature itself is purely ‘deterministic’,,, (note that this does not ‘prove’ free will’ with 100% certainty, it merely falsifies the Darwinian belief that nature is deterministic, i.e. Popper’s falsification criteria)
Aside from all that,,, Dr. Egnor’s main point in his article was not the fact that determinism has been falsified by quantum mechanics, but was the fact that the denial of free will by Darwinists is simply insane in that the claim undermines its own claim as to being true.
As Martin Cothran explains, “The claim that free will is an illusion requires the possibility that minds have the freedom to assent to a logical argument, a freedom denied by the claim itself. It is an assent that must, in order to remain logical and not physiological, presume a perspective outside the physical order.”
In short, the claim from Atheistic Naturalists that they have no free will completely undermines any claim that they may make that they are making a rationally coherent argument in the first place:
In short, the claim from Atheists that they do not have free will leads to catastrophic epistemological failure for them. All rationality, reason, and therefore all of science itself, is completely undermined in the atheist’s claim that he does not have free will.
One final note, allowing the Agent causality of God ‘back’ into physics, as the Christian founders of modern science originally envisioned,,,, (Isaac Newton, Michael Faraday, James Clerk Maxwell, and Max Planck, to name a few of the Christian founders),,, and as quantum mechanics itself now empirically demands (with the closing of the free will loophole by Anton Zeilinger and company), rightly allowing the Agent causality of God ‘back’ into physics provides us with a very plausible resolution for the much sought after ‘theory of everything’ in that Christ’s resurrection from the dead provides an empirically backed reconciliation, via the Shroud of Turin, between quantum mechanics and general relativity into the much sought after ‘Theory of Everything”. Here are a few posts where I lay out and defend some of the evidence for that claim:
To give us a small glimpse of the power that was involved in Christ’s resurrection from the dead, the following recent article found that, ”it would take 34 Thousand Billion Watts of VUV radiations to make the image on the shroud. This output of electromagnetic energy remains beyond human technology.”
Verse:
Ask “physics”, they are the ones doing the reasoning and creating an “illusory” self – Michael Egnor.
“Physics” are very kind and usually “inform” the “illusory” self of the results.
The illusory self is just an spectator. Curiously, “the illusory self” is “conscious” of its own “illusion”!
Not joking, just more atheist/materialist lunacy. Harry Potter makes more sense.
seversky:
ID is NOT anti-evolution, so your question doesn’t make any sense. Free will can NEVER make all of the evidence supporting ID go away. Free will can NEVER produce positive evidence for blind watchmaker evolution.
seversky is clearly driven to strawman caricatures.
Seversky
Yes. People change their views all the time. An honest person will change his views when he realizes that his current idea cannot be supported and that there is a better explanation.
People convert from atheism to belief in God all the time. The opposite happens also.
Those are free-will decisions. They’re not even driven strictly by logic, since there are many people who see the truth of Design but it takes them a long time to give up materialism because they have an emotional attachment to atheism.
If Michael Egnor saw clear evidence that refuted his views, I think he would change.
Anthony Flew changed his mind on the ID inference. That was a free-will decision he made.
How can j. coyne (a naturalist ) know anything?
https://strangenotions.com/naturalisms-epistemological-nightmare/
Seversky, that’s definitely a straw man, same applied logic asks why under your pretense attempt to prove or change anyone’s mind here. You are wasting your time for the same reasons you think Egnor won’t change his, which inter you are following a depressive loop you can’t escape because you can’t help trying to prove us wrong. It’s all one massive waste of time you are trapped in.
Or we have free will and there is reason for your effort, you decide
AarobS1978
I agree, which is why I think it is pointless to argue either side of this issue.
@Ed George
WHAT is this free-will everyone keeps talking about?
To be rational requires free will. It is a process of freely comparing abstract, immaterial concepts and arriving at conclusions following the rules of logic. There is a responsibility involved which gives a rational decision some integrity and value.
If however, a person’s thoughts are just determined and there is no free will, then people who claim such a thing should not act and speak as if free will, and rational choice actually exist.
Nobody should be held accountable for whatever thoughts or conclusions they have since all are determined.
Truthfreedom – if you don’t know, ask a probate lawyer.
as to Ed George at 14:
^^^^ see post 7 and 8.
https://uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/michael-egnor-on-why-jerry-coyne-cant-actually-deny-free-will/#comment-691807
i.e. Falsifying, i.e. “disproving”, the atheist’s claim for determinism has been relatively easy, whereas “proving” the reality of free will, while not achieved with “100% scientific certainty”, (nothing ever is proven with absolute “100% certainty” in science). has, nonetheless, for all practical purposes, achieved a impressive level of empirical verification that we can be extremely confident in.
Might I also suggest that it might greatly help those who are trying to make blanket statements about how science operates to actually understand how science operates in the first place?
Just a suggestion.
Bob O’H
Do probate lawyers have “free-will”, Bob?
Do you know it?
Truthfreedom – my comment was a joke. At least an attempt at one.
BA77 that was my post, and understood I agree with you, but I also agree with Ed on this because most of the arguing on this topic comes really from what really constitutes as evidence, and in both cases it’s the observers interpretation.
The closest they really have ever gotten to truly disproving free will was libet, and that just recently was debunked, only took 30 years.
But if I where to venture an idea that free will could be truly disproven, it wouldn’t come from what influences your Decision or what physical processes where involved.
It come from proven everything was epiphenominal
Do you think that is even possible?
Here’s a presentation on the topic:
https://youtu.be/SPu0z_np9d4
Wow! 🙂
https://www.the-sun.com/lifestyle/tech/359723/elon-musk-promises-awesome-neuralink-headset-that-links-brain-to-computer-this-year/