DOWNLOADS: PDF of EXPLORING THE ILLUSION OF FREE WILL, SECOND EDITION
and
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
"While “freedom
of belief” sounds like a perfectly
desirable principle, a closer
inspection reveals that it is
unintelligible. We are no more free
to consciously believe the things
that we believe than we are free to
change what facts in the world are
true.
"There's nothing more costly than
"Will" that is free. To have it and hold it consumes
energy, And
limits our neurons and dendritic
tree, And makes us just less than whoever
we be"
MyNews24 - "The Free Will That We Don't Have"
by shaunstanley
June 08, 2012"In conclusion, ‘free will’ is
something that it is thought we
typically have, and we use it in
order to cash-out
our common sense notions of moral
responsibility. Not only do we not
have the free will we typically
think we do, but the concept itself
is mysterious and incoherent. Its
incoherency is easily demonstrated,
as is the fact that we do not have
it. This has grave implications for
religion. The realization that there
is no free will shatters particular
doctrines of religion."
Basic
Rules of Life - "More on
Free Will" June 7, 2012
"The old notion of true freedom—the
ability to do otherwise—has been
killed dead by science. Why aren’t
people emphasizing that rather than
trying to
save
free will by using other
definitions, or, worse, telling us
that determinism and the illusion of
dualistic really is really the kind
of free will we want. That’s not the
kind of free will I want! I want the
ability to choose freely among
alternatives, but I don’t have it.
But I, like all of us, pretend
otherwise."
Godless Business - "Causality, Determinism, and Free
Will" June
6, 2012
"While this is a very brief overview
of the decisions I have come to
regarding this topic, I hope I have
communicated the salient points. In
short, we is no
choice – there is no such thing as
“free will” because we live in a
deterministic universe. We know this
because causality seems to hold true
in all relevant circumstances."
Data and the Divine
- "The Free Will Irony" by Gus
Lott, Ph. D. June 6, 2012
"A little more on the book
“Outliers” by Malcolm Gladwell. It
talks about the illusion of the
self-made man. As I mentioned,
Gladwell begins by pointing out that
virtually all professional Hockey
players in Canada are born between
January and
April… and goes from there. I highly
recommend the read."
