[shrinkermd]

Now the NYT tells me they have no "free will" but out of my "free will" must come the will to pay them $50 a year to read their premium service.

If I had only known! I had better donate to FR before it is too late.

[Uncle Ike]

" Daniel C. Dennett, a philosopher and cognitive scientist at Tufts University who has written extensively about free will, said that “when we consider whether free will is an illusion or reality, we are looking into an abyss. What seems to confront us is a plunge into nihilism and despair.” "

Funny -- this plays into an idea that I've been playing with for a little while now.

I throw this out for what it's worth --

"The core difference between the Conservative Mindset and the Liberal, is that Conservatives believe in - and accept - "free will"; Liberals don't."

[freedomfiter2]

The German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer said, as Einstein paraphrased it, that “a human can very well do what he wants, but cannot will what he wants.”



Well said. The will is a slave to the heart.

[G Larry]

Good!

This idiot has provide my defense for when I hit him in the face!

[Lucas McCain]

Upon what grounds does Dennett, and other rabid atheists, attack theist? After all, if there is no free will, how can I be held responsible for what I believe?

[ccmay]

We have no choice but to believe in free will.

-ccm

[traviskicks]

bkamrk

[Delta 21]

God's will trumps your free will.

[aruanan]

Daniel C. Dennett, a philosopher and cognitive scientist at Tufts University who has written extensively about free will, said that “when we consider whether free will is an illusion or reality, we are looking into an abyss. What seems to confront us is a plunge into nihilism and despair.”

Not if you're a Calvinist or a Muslim.

[sphinx]

Perhaps "free will" is not the place to begin. The fact is, we make choices. Our choices may be variously conditioned, but in the final analysis we are all conscious of choosing. This then leads to the question of making the right choices, which is what all the fuss is about.

[Dogrobber]

All of this is nothing new. These questions have plagued humanity since Plato and before. Does man have free will or is everything rigged and we are just puppets?

Calling someone a "science philosopher" or couching the question in terms of describing man as a "meat machine" changes nothing nor adds to the discussion.

This is just another aspect of the Darwinian anti-religionist viewpoint. Man is a product of evolution and is nothing more than a meat machine dancing to the tune of his hormones and genetic coding. God does not exist.

Pay no attention to the man behind the curtin, he does not exist.

[Elsie]

That is hardly a new thought.

Duh!!

Welcome to another A vs C thread war!

[Iris7]

Run into such arguments regularly these days.

Several arguments refute this sophomoric conceit. (The person forwarding the argument always refuses the refutation, of course.) Here are four.

First, there is a circularity refutation. "If there is no free will, then you, who claim there is no free will, are merely a thing without moral standing, simply a voice box, a meat tinker toy and not even a robot since "robot" implies some autonomy. If your hypothesis is correct then by your own argument listening to you is not different from watching a movie, a television commercial, or even the clouds. Who should pay attention to you at all? Why should I? If your hypothasis is correct then your "opinion" is meaningless in the same way you yourself are meaningless.

Secondly, your argument is not disprovable and so cannot be scientific. Your argument has no mathematical structure (nor even a logical structure, as shown by the first proposition. It makes neither falsifiable nor verifiable predictions and is therefore mere matter of faith, that is, an opinion.

Third, organic structures work on the quantum level. Examine biochemistry and physical chemistry. Therefore organic structures are not bound by "causality" in the same way as, and for the same reason, as electrons in the two slit experiment. Therefore by their nature organic structures are not predictable except statistically.

Fourthly, you are advancing an hypothesis and therefore the burden of proof lies with you. I do not have to refute your argument but instead you must convince me you are correct. You have not done so.

Each of these arguments is sufficient unto itself.

An irrational belief without evidence is in psychiatry technically a "delusion", I believe. Therefore we can categorize your belief are "delusion" in exactly the same way we can so describe the arguments of a schizophrenic.

Q.E.D."

[B-Chan]

“If people freak at evolution, etc.,” he wrote in an e-mail message, “how much more will they freak if scientists and philosophers tell them they are nothing more than sophisticated meat machines, and is that conclusion now clearly warranted or is it premature?”

Meat machines, eh? Someone needs to tell this guy about the many documented cases of human beings with tiny, atrophied brains who nevertheless had full mental function. For example, British pediatrician Dr. John Lorber recorded several famous cases of normally-functioning (and even high-IQ) patients whose brain tissues were less than 1mm in thickness — or who lacked any brain tissue at all. If the human mind were only a program running on a meat computer (the brain), then these people should have been drooling vegetables — but they weren't.

I don't buy it.

[Moonman62]

The liberal NYTimes making more excuses for people who behave badly.

[r9etb]

The thrust of the article seems to say that it's an either/or situation.

I think the reality is simply that "people are complicated."

Ultimately, I think the lab experiments described cannot control for all of the possible factors behind one of the decisions they're purporting to measure. The so-called "finger-twitch" experiment, for example: how much of the respective "twitching" decisions were pre-determined by the fact that the subject knew in advance that he was going to be asked to move things randomly?

People just have too much previous history and experience for our actions to be neatly placed into either "deterministic" or "free will" boxes.

[<1/1,000,000th%]

“The more you scrutinize it, the more you realize you don’t have it,” he said.

What he means is that the Dems are in charge of Congress.

[Tanniker Smith]

“how much more will they freak if scientists and philosophers tell them they are nothing more than sophisticated meat machines

Not at all. We are sophisticated meat machines. However, the sophistication is that we have SOULS and cows don't. God saw to that.

Have a happy.

TS

[Leftism is Mentally Deranged]

The left can't accept the idea of free will, because they think that we are nothing but matter and that mind is an illusion. Leftists believe in materialism = that there is nothing more than matter.
Also, accepting the idea of free will would mean that people can be responsible for their actions. Leftism says that no one is responsible for his/her actions.

[mjp]

every physical system that has been investigated has turned out to be either deterministic or random.

So, does that mean that immaterial systems have to be either deterministic or random?

Not.

[Tax-chick]

I have free will. I'd rather not be around people who think they don't.