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Eau Courant
- Occasional
sips of news related to naturalism and its implications, updated erratically -
The Free Will Delusion? - Mail & Guardian Online, by
Ndumiso Ngcobo, who has spent most of his adult life drinking beer…
A few years ago I read a book entitled
God’s Debris, written by Scott Adams of Dilbert fame. (Out of
interest, the book is
freely available on the web). In the book, Adams dedicates an entire chapter
to debunking the myth he calls “the illusion of free will”. That’s correct,
Adams does not believe that human beings are capable of exercising free will …
Note
to Science: Philosophy is Your Friend - Scienceline, 4/23/08
The inability of scientists to
entertain other explanations, including non-natural
ones, can impede scientific progress, says Delfino. To
maintain this neutral approach, he believes science must
abandon methodological naturalism.
Delfino is challenging how
science interprets the gathered data, not the general
process of obtaining this information. Instead of being
constricted by methodological naturalism, he says
scientists should classify their data differently given
sufficient evidence. Like Socrates who believed in
following the fact track wherever it leads, Delfino
says, “We must also be open to changing the way we
conceive of things based on new evidence.” He says the
transition from Newton’s physics to Einstein’s
relativity demonstrates that scientific theories are
always tentative and subject to future revision.
[Delfino has a good point, see
here - Ed.]
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Brain Scanners Can See Your Decisions Before You Make Them
- Wired 4/13/08
"It's not like you're a
machine. Your brain activity is the physiological
substance in which your personality and wishes and
desires operate," researcher
John Dylan-Haynes said. The unease people
feel at the potential unreality of free will, said
National Institutes of Health neuroscientist
Mark Hallett, originates in a misconception of self
as separate from the brain. "That's the same notion as
the mind being separate from the body -- and I don't
think anyone really believes that," said Hallett. "A
different way of thinking about it is that your
consciousness is only aware of some of the things your
brain is doing." Hallett doubts that free will exists as
a separate, independent force.
[Dillon-Haynes's study got a great deal of news coverage
worrying that free will has been exposed as illusory -
Ed.]
No Soul? I Can Live with That. No Free Will? AHHHHH!!! -
philosopher Tamler Sommers, Psychology Today, 4/2/08
Imagine a world where no one believed in free will.
Life would no longer have meaning, right? We’d be robots, puppets on a string,
living a mockery of a real human existence. And why be moral? After all, if we
do something bad, we didn’t freely choose to do it, and so we cannot be
morally responsible for that choice. So why bother?...
Accountable but Not Responsible - Dr. Cynthia Geppert,
Psychiatric Times, 4/1/08
"Jack"
has been in our emergency department at least 100 times in the 4 years I have
worked at the Veterans Affairs Hospital. I first encountered him in the medical
ICU, where he was hospitalized multiple times with chest pain and ECG changes
after cocaine binges. He was often admitted to the inpatient psychiatric unit
when we could not sort out his accidental overdoses from suicidal behavior or
when he feigned self-harm to escape legal consequences or to have a warm, safe
place to stay. Once in the psychiatry ward, Jack was sexually inappropriate and
would exploit other, more vulnerable patients and was quickly discharged...
No offense, but you don't deserve your salary - Chris Colin, San
Francisco Chronicle, 3/17/08
Any talents, work ethic, intelligence or ambition
strike me as qualities we inherited or learned along the way — or else
cultivated thanks to other qualities we inherited or learned. A person who pulls
herself up by her bootstraps, in other words, is a person lucky enough to have
that determination, grit, inclination, whatever...
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