A fellow Tippling Philosopher with whom I am having a long and protracted debate on free will sent me a poem he wrote on where we were at a bout a month ago on free will. He styles himself as a linguist and humanities man, quite explicitly, and this was true to form. I thought it would be amusing to put my riposte in poetic form!
Tag determinism
So I have a question. I will detail the following research. For ‘free will’ to be true, it has to explain the following. Or more accurately, the following has to be fully explicable within the free will hypothesis. How does it do that?
The Tippling Philosophers group that I frequent has a collection of very differing viewpoints, from reductionist style physicalism to Christianity; agnosticism to various degrees of spiritualism. Fiona, who is posting here, has had an interesting journey. She has had, and continues to have, experience with Eastern worldviews and practices (including yoga and meditation, and Eastern philosophies such as Buddhism). This comes through in her post. But what is interesting is her acceptance fairly recently of the illusion of free will, and how this has affected her take on, well, herself. The ever illusive “I”.
Genetics has a more powerful influence on pupils’ GCSE exam results than teachers, schools or family environment, according to a new study published tonight.
Researchers from King’s College London found that genetic differences account for 58 per cent of the differences between pupils’ GCSE exam scores – while environment (home or school) only accounted for 29 per cent. They also found boys’ results were more likely to reflect their genes than girls.
Certain fears can be inherited through the generations, a provocative study of micereports. The authors suggest that a similar phenomenon could influence anxiety and addiction in humans. But some researchers are sceptical of the findings because a biological mechanism that explains the phenomenon has not been identified.
There was a famous case of a terrible shooting in 1966. Charles Whitman, an otherwise intelligent (138 IQ), ‘normal’ man, did a very abnormal thing. Charles Joseph Whitman (June 24, 1941 – August 1, 1966) was an American engineering student and former U.S. Marine, who killed seventeen people and wounded thirty-two others in a mass shooting rampage located in and around the Tower of the University of Texas in Austin on the afternoon of August 1, 1966.
I am just about to listen to this but have not yet. H/T Skepticule podcast for this! Let me know…
Researchers have discovered a gene that regulates alcohol consumption and when faulty can cause excessive drinking. They have also identified the mechanism underlying this phenomenon.
I would like to put together a logical syllogism which really expresses the denial of free will through the denial of the Principle of Alternative Possibilities. The idea is that the ability to choose otherwise is rendered incoherent by lacking fundamental grounding reasoning since all deliberation and causal reasons are taking into account when choosing, say, A, so that what could possibly ground choosing B, rationally, in that identical scenario? As Ted Honderich states in the Oxford Handbook of Free Will:
Another thing I wanted to add was the idea that the mental, the experiential, supervenes on the physical. This means that the physical in some way defines and is necessary for the mental.
This is becoming more and more evident. Let me exemplify:
How much do you love your mother?
A new Tippling Philosopher has recently joined our group and come to the last few meetings. I was discussing free will with him in the pub, and he seemed to fail to understand how the Principle of Alternative Possibilities worked, and how the incoherence of free will seems insurmountable. Here is the last email I sent to the group to try to explain.
Dilbert doing philosophy. Good stuff! Particularly the last one!
I am presently reading an absolutely superb book by David Eagleman called Incognito:
The book is a popular foray into psychology and neuroscience and synthesises a host of different studies into things brain. I wanted to just bring up a few fascinating studies which cast doubt upon the idea that we have fully fledged, or even remotely authored, conscious free will. It even talks about chicken sexers, which is nice. Rather than produce notes, I have tried to directly link the claims.
A friend of mine on facebook, George Ortega, who runs the causalconsciousness website, alerted me to the website categorisation project known as…
An online friend of mine whom has a real interest in the concept of free will, and all the problematic baggage it brings with it. He has a proclivity for producing adverts for newspapers and publications like Free Inquiry that concern themselves with this erroneous philosophical belief. Here is one such piece from the Free Inquiry which does a good job of summing up the issues with an account of libertarian free will, and how that works in the context of Christianity. Let me know what you think.
Childhood poverty and chronic stress may lead to problems regulating emotions as an adult, according to research published online in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
In refutation of the argument for “free moral agency,” Ingersoll once used the following illustration, — itself an argument as clear as it is unanswerable: —
“It is insisted that man is free, and is responsible, because he knows right from wrong. But the compass does not navigate the ship; neither does it in any way, of itself, determine the direction that is taken. When wind and waves are too powerful, the compass is of no importance. The pilot may read it correctly, and may know the direction the ship ought to take, but the compass is not a force. So men, blown by the tempests of passion, may have the intellectual conviction that they should go another way; but of what use, of what force, is the conviction?”
Here is a criticism about God’s omniscience and omnipotence based upon a point made by John D. Barrow in Impossibility, drawing on the work of cognitive scientist Donald Mackay. To put it into simple terms, it might be easier to state it as follows:
As most of you probably already know, my first book was Free Will? An into whether we have free will or whether I was always going to write this book. This has received overwhelmingly good reviews (the only negative one on Amazon.com is from a mental Catholic priest who hadn’t read it and who has been banned from here, as well as negatively reviewing all of my books.
Anywho, I just thought I’d share the last couple of reviews for Free Will?
Not sure if I have posted this one before, but needing to do quick and edifying (hopefully) posts, I am…