George Ellis: If you seriously believe that fundamental forces leave no space for free will, then it’s impossible for us to genuinely make choices as moral beings. We wouldn’t be accountable in any meaningful way for our reactions to global climate change, child trafficking or viral pandemics. The underlying physics would in reality be governing Read More…
Tag: Free Will
Michael Egnor: Physicist Sean Carroll rejects logic when he rejects free will
This is not an excellent time to be a materialist. Materialism is losing its Cool. It’s not even making sense.
Michael Egnor: Jerry Coyne just can’t give up denying free will
Egnor: Someday, I predict, there will be a considerable psychiatric literature on the denial of free will. It’s essentially a delusion dressed up as science. To insist that your neurotransmitters completely control your choices is no different than insisting that your television or your iphone control your thoughts. It’s crazy.
Freedom as an illusion, with physicist Brian Greene
When New Scientist’s world comes away feeling empowered by stuff like this, what does it mean for the rest of us?
Michael Egnor: How Libet’s free will research is misrepresented
Sometimes, says Michael Egnor (below right), misrepresentation may be deliberate because Libet’s work doesn’t support a materialist perspective.
Michael Egnor: How a neuroscientist imaged free will (and “free won’t”)
At first, Libet thought that free will might not be real. Then he looked again…
Michael Egnor on why Jerry Coyne can’t actually deny free will
He wants to and he tried to—at a speaking engagement at Williams U. But if he is a meat puppet, well, …
Darwinian philosopher Michael Ruse muses on life
He does not really address the fact that most naturalists don’t actually believe that the free will he assumes actually exists.
Eric Holloway: Can free will be a scientific idea?
In everyday life, we casually throw around the terms “confidence,” “chance,” and “likely.” We sometimes attach numbers too. We say that an event has a 90% chance of occurring. But, what do we mean by a “90% chance”?
Did the neural pattern that showed that there is no free will turn out to be noise?
If it was just noise, you may not hear that any time soon from the textbook mill.
Mind vs Matter: the Result of an Error of Thought
(I think we’ve corrupted KF’s thread long enough.) The entire problem of mind/matter dualism is rooted in a single error of thought: the reification of an abstract descriptive model of experience into an causal agency independent of the mind that conceives it and the mental experience it is extrapolated from. It is similar to the Read More…
Rob Sheldon offers a physics perspective on free will
Sheldon: My objection, which I will develop in two streams, is that both reductionism and emergence are just wrong, as is the philosophical denial of free will based on them.
Philosopher: The laws of physics don’t rule out free will
George Musser, a science writer reviewing a new book on the subject, thinks it will force free will skeptics to become more sophisticated in their arguments
Neurosurgeon Michael Egnor: Physicist Sabine Hossenfelder is really confused about free will
It really is quite funny. And physicists should stick to physics.
Transhumanists want to fix our morality for us as well
That would appear to make transhumanism an enemy of free will and of freedom generally. But give them credit for being honest about it.