Naturalism.org

In seeking to establish the existence of what he calls a ‘plain person’s free will’, David Hodgson adduces 8 conditions, the joint satisfaction of which would, he claims, result in our having such free will (proposition 9 asserts this conclusion).  The plain persons’ conception of free will, Hodgson says, is the libertarian conception, in which it is incompatible with determinism.  Although what ordinary people actually believe about free will is an empirical matter in need of research, it’s likely that many people (but not all) have at least a vague

Causality, Victimhood, and Empowerment: How to Hold Addicts Accountable

In his latest book, Freedom Evolves, Tufts University philosopher Daniel Dennett coins the wonderful term “moral levitation” – you’ll even find it in the index. It names what some philosophers and many lay people think is required for morally responsible choices: “Real autonomy, real freedom, requires the chooser be somehow suspended, isolated from the push and pull of…causes, so that when decisions are made, nothing causes them except you!” (p.101-2, original emphasis).

Genes 'hold clue to cancer lifestyles'

6/17/03, BBC News

However, Dr Jonathan Chick, a consultant psychiatrist at the Royal Edinburgh Hospital, who specialises in alcohol problems, told BBC News Online that regardless of the influence of genes, free will still played an important role.

He said: "There is no genetic condition that completely removes free will with respect to drinking or smoking.

Letter to Reason

4/15/03

Reason Magazine 

To the Editor:

Quoted in Jacob Sullum’s review of Pharmacracy: Medicine and Politics in America, Thomas Szasz writes that “Attributing mental illnesses, such as addiction and panic disorder, to biological alterations occurring at a ‘subcellular level’ is a parody of the denial of free will, choice, and responsibility".

Psychiatry’s dark secret

 by Sheldon Richman

 2/28/03, Manchester Times

Time magazine recently published its annual cover story on health, focusing on the relationship between mind and body. To its credit, it contains some rarely heard criticisms of the mental-health laws, which nearly everyone accepts as appropriate in the land of the free.

Using the causal story behind addiction to combat stigma and discrimination

Join Together is to be congratulated for convening a national policy panel on discrimination and addiction, and for the resulting report, which highlights important changes that should be made in policies involving those in recovery. 

“You sound to me as though you don’t believe in free will,” said Billy Pilgrim.

“If I hadn’t spent so much time studying Earthlings,” said the Tralfamadorian, “I wouldn’t have any idea what was meant by free will.  I’ve visited thirty-one inhabited planets in the universe, and I have studied reports on one hundred more.  Only on Earth is there any talk of free will.”  

-- Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse–Five