Tag determinism

The Argument from Format – How the Cartesian soul cannot be the originator of free will

This essay sets out to dispel the myth that the soul can be the originator for free will. I will start the essay by establishing the Cartesian idea of what the body is and showing that Descartes and modern biology indicate that the body is a biological machine. After indicating how Descartes (and others) use the soul as the originator for free will / volition, I will show that in order for the soul to be labelled and identified as a soul, it must have the format and properties of a soul. These must be adhered to in order to designate the soul with coherent and consistent properties. To conclude, I will maintain that if a soul must adhere to rules and laws to remain being a soul, then it must operate within a deterministic framework.

Lizards Show Evolution Is Predictable

Science Daily – July 19, 2013 — If you could hit the reset button on evolution and start over, would essentially the same species appear? Yes, according to a study of Caribbean lizards by researchers at the University of California, Davis, Harvard University and the University of Massachusetts. The work is published July 19 in the journal Science.

Libertarian Free Will and the Principle of Alternate Possibilities

So I am arguing in many different forums at the moment about free will, and in particular, about whether Libertarian Free Will (LFW) is compatible with the Kalam Cosmological Argument.

i define LFW here as the ability to choose otherwise. That means I invoke the Principle of Alternate Possibilities. This means that given a particular situation (CC1), I could choose A or B, and if we rewound time to CC1, and given that everything would remain the same in CC1 (ceteris paribus), then the agent could somehow choose differently, invoking a freedom of the will.

Interview with Tom Clark of the Center For Naturalism

Tom Clark is the Director for the Center for Naturalism (CFN), an organisation which harbours the excellent resource Naturalism.Org. The Mission for CFN is stated as follows:

The Center for Naturalism (CFN) is an educational and advocacy organization devoted to increasing public awareness of naturalism and its implications for social and personal well-being. The CFN seeks to foster the understanding that human beings and their behavior are fully caused, entirely natural phenomena, and that human flourishing is best achieved in the light of such understanding.

Bad Decisions Arise from Faulty Information, Not Faulty Brain Circuits

Some research out seems to support an idea that ‘bad decisions’ that we make are as a result of the quality of the information coming in rather than the quality of the systems working on that information. Of course, this may call into question the quality of the systems actually responsible for collecting that data. The chicken and the egg scenario seems to persist here. Science Daily:
Apr. 15, 2013 — Making decisions involves a gradual accumulation of facts that support one choice or another. A person choosing a college might weigh factors such as course selection, institutional reputation and the quality of future job prospects.

Talk on free will is really well received

I was lucky enough to be asked back to the Dorset Humanists, based in Bournemouth, UK, to give a talk on free will. I had previously given them a talk on the Nativity, based on my book, The Nativity: A Critical Examination. They appeared to enjoy it enough to ask me back, and I obliged.

Brain Scans Might Predict Future Criminal Behavior

What is frustrating about this article is the fact that Science Daily produced it and I saw it just as I returned from giving a talk on free will to the Dorset Humanists. Grr. I talked about similar predicitve pieces of research, such as lack of fear conditioning in toddlers and criminal records, as in Gao et al, whose research concluded:

New Studies Link Gene to Selfish Behavior in Kids, Find Other Children Natural Givers

Can’t believe I missed this one. Interesting, and something I will bring up in my talk tonight on free will at Southampton University to the Atheist Society. Research into prosocial (kind) behaviour is always interesting, and something I have documented here, here and here. there is a mix of genetic and environmental influences with this one. It seems that talking to children about giving, about kindness, is more important than role-modeling when measuring children’s kindness. Of course, children who do not have these environmental influences will be at a disadvantage to others who have, and these are variables outside of their control.

Getting Around the Uncertainty Principle: Physicists Make First Direct Measurements of Polarization States of Light

Science Daily: Mar. 3, 2013 — Researchers at the University of Rochester and the University of Ottawa have applied a recently developed technique to directly measure for the first time the polarization states of light. Their work both overcomes some important challenges of Heisenberg’s famous Uncertainty Principle and also is applicable to qubits, the building blocks of quantum information theory.

Red Brain, Blue Brain: Republicans and Democrats Process Risk Differently, Research Finds

I love research like this, it just fascinates me, and adds to the mountains of empirical evidence that supports the logical and philosophical evidence / argumentation which underpins determinism (or, more accurately, the lack of libertarian free will) about which I wrote my first book – Free Will? An investigation into whether we have free will or whether I was always going to write this book. Which, you will glad to know, has some cracking reviews.

Craig, Kalam and Quantum Indeterminacy

William Lane Craig, as we all know, is an apologist with a predilection for the Kalam Cosmological Argument, which goes like this:
1) Everything that has a beginning of its existence has a cause of its existence;

2) The universe has a beginning of its existence;

C) Therefore: The universe has a cause of its existence.

The point I want to make today is about quantum indeterminacy. This is the notion that, at the quantum, microscopic level, things could be indeterminate, or ‘uncaused’. This potentially invalidates the first premise.