DOWNLOADS: PDF of EXPLORING THE ILLUSION OF FREE WILL, SECOND EDITION
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PDF of
FREE WILL -
MOVING BEYOND THE ILLUSION: SCREENPLAY FOR A DOCUMENTARY
BY
George Ortega
"The debate about free
will, long the purview
of philosophers alone,
has been given new life
by scientists,
especially
neuroscientists studying
how the brain works. And
what they're finding
supports the idea that
free will is a complete
illusion."
"In an intriguing review
in the July 2 edition of
the journal Science,
published online
Thursday, Ruud Custers
and Henk Aarts of
Utrecht University in
the Netherlands lay out
the mounting evidence of
the power of what they
term the 'unconscious
will.'...John Bargh of
Yale University, who 10
years ago predicted many
of the findings
discussed by Custers and
Aarts in a paper
entitled "The Unbearable
Automaticity of Being,"
called the Science
paper a "landmark —
nothing like this has
been in Science
before."
"Some
people think that
quantum mechanics shows
that determinism is
false, and so holds out
a hope that we can be
ultimately responsible
for what we do. But even
if quantum mechanics had
shown that determinism
is false (it hasn’t),
the question would
remain: how can
indeterminism, objective
randomness, help in any
way whatever to make you
responsible for your
actions? The answer to
this question is easy.
It can’t."
"In modern science, it is
difficult to find the
gap into which to slip
free will—the uncaused
causer—because there
seems to be no part of
the machinery that does
not follow in a causal
relationship from the
other parts."
"The philosophical
definition of free will
uses the phrase 'could
have done otherwise'... "As a neuroscientist,
you've got to be a
determinist. There are
physical laws, which the
electrical and chemical
events in the brain
obey. Under identical
circumstances, you
couldn't have done
otherwise; there's no
'I' which can say 'I
want to do otherwise'."
"The
discovery that humans
possess a determined
will has profound
implications for moral
responsibility. Indeed,
Harris is even critical
of the idea that free
will is "intuitive": he
says careful
introspection can cast
doubt on free will. In
an earlier book on
morality, Harris argues
'Thoughts simply arise
in the brain. What else
could they do? The truth
about us is even
stranger than we may
suppose: The illusion of
free will is itself an
illusion'"
If you think carefully
about any decision you
have made in the past,
you will recognize that
all of them were
ultimately based on
similar—genetic or
social—inputs to which
you had been exposed.
And you will also
discover that you had no
control over these
inputs, which means that
you had no free will in
taking the decisions you
did.
Cause and Effect
– At about the 5th century BC,
in his work On the Mind,
the Greek Philosopher Leucippus
penned the earliest known
universal statement describing
what we today understand as
determinism, or the law of cause
and effect
“Nothing happens at random,
but everything for a reason and
by necessity.”
Human Will –
The concepts of will and free
will are actually Christian in
orgin. It was Saint Paul in his
Letter to the Romans, which is
dated at about 58 A.D., who
first discovered this thing we
call human will. He came to it
by recognizing that he could not
often do as much right as he
wanted. Saint Paul wrote in
Romans 7:15 that:
“I don’t understand myself at
all, for I really want to do
what is right, but I can’t.” I
do what I don’t want to – what I
hate.” (Translation – The Living
Bible)
Free Will --
Nothing new was said on the
matter for the next few hundred
years until St. Augustine
grappled with the concepts of
evil and justice. Saint
Augustine wrote in his book
De Libero Arbitrio, 386-395
A.D., (translated as “On Free
Will”)
“Evil deeds are punished by
the justice of God. They would
not be punished justly if they
had not been performed
voluntarily.”
The problem he saw was that
if human beings do not have a
free will, it would be unfair
for God to arbitrarily reward or
punish us. St. Augustine
concluded that God could not be
unfair, and so he created the
concept of a human free will,
whereby we earn our reward or
punishment by what we freely do.
Scientific concepts
relating to the determined will
vs. free will question
Classical Mechanics
-- In 1687 Sir Isaac Newton
publishes his “Laws of Motions”
that mathematically describes
the physical universe as acting
in a mechanistic manner
according to the principle of
cause and effect.
Classical Mechanics is a
completely deterministic theory
Heisenberg
Uncertainty Principle
-- In 1925 Warner Heisenberg
describes mathematically that…
We can measure the position
of a particle or the momentum of
a particle (momentum meaning its
direction and velocity), but we
cannot simultaneously measure
the position and momentum of a
particle.
Copenhagen
Interpretation of Quantum
Mechanics -- Niels Bohr
and others make the following
assertions;
1) Particles do not have a
simultaneous position and
momentum.
2) Elementary particles
behave indeterministically, and
are not subject to the principle
of cause and effect.
Believers in free will saw
the Heisenberg Uncertainty
Principle and Copenhagen
Interpretation of Quantum
Mechanics as providing a
possibility for free will to
exist. They asserted that if
elementary particles behave
indeterministically, they are
not subject to the principle of
cause and effect that prohibits
free will.
But, as noted above, it
eventually became apparent that
indeterminism also prohibits
free will.
Exploring the Illusion of Free Will,
2nd Edition Chapters
21. How State-of-the-Universe
Causality Makes Free Will
Impossible
In this episode of Exploring
the Illusion of Free Will, taped
on July 02, 2011, I explain how
our universe evolves moment by
moment in a completely causal
way, and because our human will
cannot escape that causality,
free will must be impossible.
22. Why Deliberation is Not
Evidence of Free Will
In this episode of Exploring
the Illusion of Free Will, taped
on July 2, 2011, I explain that
because deliberated decisions
are made at the level of the
unconscious, and are subject to
causality, deliberation does not
make for a free will.
23.
Exploring Western Religious
Perspectives on the Nature of
Human Will
In this episode of Exploring
the Illusion of Free Will, taped
on July 14, 2011, I present
evidence that at least one
Christian, St. Paul, seemed to
understand that we humans do not
have a free will, and why St.
Augustine coined the term "free
will" to explain evil in the
world.
24. Implications of Overcoming
the Illusion of Free Will
In this episode of Exploring
the Illusion of Free Will, taped
on July 14, 2011, George Ortega
presents some of the ways our
lives would improve both
personally and societally by
overcoming our erroneous premise
of free will.
25. Causal Reality, Off the Cuff
#2
In this episode of Exploring
the Illusion of Free Will, taped
on July 14, 2011, I talk
extemporaneously about our
causal, unconscious human will,
and how a causal perspective can
enhance our lives.
26. Because Elements of Every
Decision are in the Unconscious,
Free Will is Impossible
In this episode of Exploring
the Illusion of Free will, taped
on July 26, 2011, I explain that
because the processing center(s)
and data upon which we base our
every decision reside in our
unconscious, free will is
absolutely impossible.
27. Why If We Had a Free Will,
We Could Not Interact with
Inanimate Matter
In this episode of Exploring
the Illusion of Free Will, taped
on July 26, 2011, I explain why
it would be impossible for a
will free of causality to act on
matter that is completely
governed by causality.
28. Galen Strawson's "Nothing
Can be Causa Sui" Refutation of
Free Will
In this episode of Exploring
the Illusion of Free Will, taped
on August 9, 2011, I describe
British philosopher Galen
Strawson's refutation of free
will based on a logical
extension of the principle that
nothing can be the cause of
itself
29. Free Will vs. Causal,
Unconscious Will Responses to
Economic Downturns
In this episode of Exploring
the Illusion of Free Will, taped
on August 9, 2011, I talk about
how our perspective on human
will dramatically effects our
personal and societal responses
to the economic challenges of
our time.
30. Human Will, and the
Operative Distinction between
Determinism and Causality
In this episode of Exploring
the Illusion of Free Will, taped
on August 9, 2011, I address a
common mistake many philosophers
make in concluding that because
determinism at the quantum level
is not subject to accurate
prediction via classical
mechanics, that this process is
therefore somehow acausal.