Computer engineering prof Robert J. Marks, first author of Introduction to Evolutionary Informatics, explains, When I was boy, my father explained free will and predestination to me: I dig a fence post hole. · Did I create the hole because of my own free will? · Or was the hole already there and I simply […]
Tag: Free Will
How to falsify reductionism with complex specified information
A philosopher claims that neuroscience has proven thoughts do not exist. Eric Holloway looks at the neuroscience and examines the claim: There is a problem with this sort of reasoning. One could make the same argument about computer code, as follows: There is no code. It’s all just assembly language. Or, there is no assembly, it’s all […]
Do quasars provide evidence for free will?
Possibly. They certainly rule out experimenter interference: Quantum particles appear to behave randomly when measured. But what if there is no free will? In that case, the physicists were fated, so to speak, to set up the experiment to achieve a certain set of results which might appear to them to be random. But that […]
Michael Egnor: Does brain stimulation research challenge free will?
If we can be forced to *want* something, is the will still free? If an electrode is applied to a specific brain region during “awake” neurosurgery, the patient may experience a strong desire to perform a related action and may even be mistaken about whether he has done so. For example, the study Movement intention […]
Michael Egnor: Is free will a dangerous myth?
The belief that there is no free will is a much more dangerous myth, he writes, at Mind Matters Today: There are four reasons to affirm the reality of free will against denial by materialist determinists. Two reasons are logical, and two are scientific. … 4. While scientific experiments do not entirely settle the matter, […]
Quantum mechanics: Pushing the “free-will loophole” back to 7.8 billion years ago
Philip Cunningham writes to tell us of an interesting experiment by quantum physicist Anton Zeilinger and colleagues that pushed the “free-will loophole” back to 7.8 billion years ago, using quasars to determine measurement settings: Abstract: In this Letter, we present a cosmic Bell experiment with polarization-entangled photons, in which measurement settings were determined based on real-time […]
Suarez: Quantum nonlocal correlations come from outside space-time
Philip Cunningham writes, I just happened to check quantum physicist and philosopher Antoine Suarez‘s youtube channel. He loaded a new video a few months ago after being silent for a few years. Quantum nonlocal correlations come from outside space-time, they cannot be explained exclusively by material links. If the experimenter has free will, then there […]
Neurosurgeon Michael Egnor asks, how can there NOT be free will?
From Mind Matters Today: Succinctly, researchers using Bell’s theoretical insight into quantum entanglement have shown that there are no deterministic local hidden variables. This means that the final state of entangled quantum particles is not determined by any variables in the initial state. Nature at its most fundamental level is indeterminate. The states of bound […]
J. P. Moreland on why minds could not simply evolve somehow
Via Chad at Truth Bomb, quoting Christian philosopher J. P. Moreland, …you can’t get something from nothing…It’s as simple as that. If there were no God, then the history of the entire universe, up until the appearance of living creatures, would be a history of dead matter with no consciousness. You would not have any […]
Neuroscientist: Free will is an illusion but we should believe we have it
From Steven Novella at The Ness: For example, as I said above, even though I am highly aware of what neuroscience has to say about the illusion of free will and decision making, I also recognize that we have to live our life as if we have free will. We do make decisions, and those […]
Stolen Concepts: All Materialist Arguments Are Self-Refuting
The stolen concept fallacy is a form of self-refutation. From Wikipedia: Stolen Concept – the act of using a concept while ignoring, contradicting or denying the validity of the concepts on which it logically and genetically depends. In an ongoing, multi-thread sub-debate at The Skeptical Zone, I have been making the case that when materialists […]