Category: Free Will
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Malcolm Pollack on AI and its Threat: Determinism, Predictability, Free Will
Our friend Malcolm Pollock in Brake Failure expresses a reasoned pessimism about our future under AI. I share his concerns. Will we humans have a future? Or are we facing what I have elsewhere called the Ultimate Replacement? In Stephen Wolfram on AI and Irreducible Complexity, Malcolm explains . . . a distinction between two…
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Dennett on the Consequence Argument against Compatibilism
Substack latest
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Could Free Will be an Illusion?
Science journalists shovel a lot of bull crap anent this topic. I debunk their sophistry. Substack latest.
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What I Believe About Free Will
My position, bluntly stated, is that we are libertarianly free (L-free). One is L-free just in case (i) one is the agent cause or unsourced source of some of one's actions, and (ii) with respect to an action of which one is the agent cause, one unconditionally could have done otherwise. As far as I'm…
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Free Will Meets Neuroscience
Here is an excerpt from Alfred R. Mele, Free Will: Action Theory Meets Neuroscience In a recent article, Libet writes: "it is only the final ‘act now’ process that produces the voluntary act. That ‘act now’ process begins in the brain about 550 msec before the act, and it begins unconsciously" (2001, p. 61).10 "There…
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Free Will Cartoon
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Could Free Will be an Illusion? (2016 Expanded Version)
0. At regular intervals we find in the popular press articles about how free will is an illusion or 'a trick the brain plays on itself.' Just today, in fact, two different readers referred me to two different articles on this theme. One was positively awful, the other merely bad. So I reckon it is…
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Victor Reppert on Soft Determinism
Victor writes, Soft determinism is still determinism. And it's really not a different type of determinism. It is, rather, drawing different conclusions from determinism, or rather, not drawing the conclusion that we are not free and not morally responsible for our actions. Exactly right.
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Georg Lichtenberg, Aphoristically, on the Freedom of the Will, with Commentary
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg, The Waste Books, tr. R. J. Hollindale, New York Review Books, 1990, pp. 161-162: We know with much greater clarity that our will is free than that everything that happens must have a cause. Could we therefore not reverse the argument for once, and say: our conception of cause and effect must…
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Is Divine Simplicity Compatible with Creaturely Freedom?
I pose a problem, offer without endorsing a solution, and then evaluate Paul Manata's objection to the solution. Suppose a creaturely agent freely performs an action A. He files his tax return, say, by the April 15th deadline. Suppose that the freedom involved is not the compatibilist "freedom of the turnspit" (to borrow Kant's derisive…
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Captain of My Soul but not Master of my Fate
William Ernest Henley's Invictus ends as follows: It matters not how strait the gate,How charged with punishments the scroll.I am the master of my fate:I am the captain of my soul. Half-right, say I. I am the captain of the ship of soul, my soul; I control rudder and sails and chart my course. But I…
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Coyne versus Vallicella Vapaista Valinnoista
I can't read it, but maybe you can. It is a response to my Jerry Coyne on Why You Really Don't Have Free Will. Update (22 August): Ilari Malkki writes: I noticed that you posted a link to my blog post "Coyne versus Vallicella Vapaista Valinnoista" (Coyne vs Vallicella on Free Will). Thanks for the…
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Free Will
You say it is a life-enhancing illusion?Perhaps it isFrom a point of view not ours.From oursIt has all the reality it needsFor all it needs to do is enhance life. And that it does.Disagree?Then seeIf you can live your lifeOn automatic pilot. Good luck with that. (If you crave something more substantial, poke around in…
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My Position on Free Will
This from a Norwegian reader: I have been enjoying your blog for a couple of years now, and I have to say that I like how your mind works. There are a lot of issues I am thinking about currently regarding philosophy and that didn't change after reading Angus Menuge's book Agents Under Fire. If…
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Could Free Will Be an Illusion? (2012 Version)
1. Could freedom of the will in the strong or unconditional 'could have done otherwise' sense be an illusion? 2. Suppose A and B are mutually incompatible but individually possible courses of action, and I am deliberating as to whether I should do A or B. (Should I continue with this blogging business, or give…