Didn't Trading Places take up this question?
Posted on 04/02/2024 5:31:02 AM PDT by Lazamataz
Before epilepsy was understood to be a neurological condition, people believed it was caused by the moon, or by phlegm in the brain. They condemned seizures as evidence of witchcraft or demonic possession, and killed or castrated sufferers to prevent them from passing tainted blood to a new generation.
Today we know epilepsy is a disease. It’s accepted that a person who causes a fatal traffic accident while in the grip of a seizure should not be charged with murder.
That’s good, says Stanford University neurobiologist Robert Sapolsky. That’s progress. But there's still a long way to go.
After more than 40 years studying humans and other primates, Sapolsky has reached the conclusion that all human behavior is as far beyond our conscious control as the convulsions of a seizure, the division of cells or the beating of our hearts.
This means accepting that a man who shoots into a crowd has no more control over his fate than the victims who happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. It means treating drunk drivers who barrel into pedestrians just like drivers who suffer a sudden heart attack and veer out of their lane.
“The world is really screwed up and made much, much more unfair by the fact that we reward people and punish people for things they have no control over,” Sapolsky said. “We’ve got no free will. Stop attributing stuff to us that isn’t there.”
Sapolsky, a MacArthur “genius” grant winner, is aware that this is an out-there position. Most neuroscientists believe humans have at least some degree of free will. So do most philosophers and the general population. Free will is essential to how we see ourselves, fueling the satisfaction of achievement or the shame of failing to do the right thing.
(Excerpt) Read more at msn.com ...
After all, with no free will, I had no choice but to conclude that.
I suspect he has a really big sin in his life, a favorite sin, that he just doesn’t want to give up. Kinda like most of us.
Didn't Trading Places take up this question?
Certainly his philosophy is directly at odds with the gift God gave us.
(BTW: It was preordained that I would write that.)
If I have no free will, that means I was forced to typo, “tpyo.”
Yet, we wonder why we see happening in the world happens?
I didn't do nothing.
“The devil made me do it” with a ‘scientific’ veneer.
This is more dehumanization science intended to further take out the value of humanity. There is no evil that can’t be justified with this. Hitler was too bold, you just have create more discrete systems that seem isolated to achieve the same thing and have a long-term horizon for implementation.
I wonder if he realizes that includes him, in which case, he has neither said nor done anything significant, as it is all predetermined programming that means nothing.
Maybe he is from Tralfamadore.
>>>>>Sapolsky said “We’ve got no free will. Stop attributing stuff to us that isn’t there.”
And there’s the proof that he doesn’t really believe what he says and that, deep down, he knows that we do have free will, because if we didn’t, we wouldn’t be able to stop doing that.
2 Thessalonians 2 NIV
11 And for this reason God will send them strong delusion, that they should believe the lie, 12 that they all may be condemned who did not believe the truth but had pleasure in unrighteousness.
This means accepting that a man who shoots into a crowd has no more control over his fate than the victims who happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.
~~~
Absolutely fallacious contention.
This isn’t supposed to be philosophy. We aren’t debating Plato or Kant or Nietzsche.
The man who shoots into a crowd didn’t have a friggin seizure which caused him to procure the weapon, bring the weapon, survey for crowds, and then finally make the decision. The weapon didn’t just drop down out of the sky right into his hands and start firing itself.
Did I miss something by now clicking and reading the bottom of the article?
We have the saying that guns don’t kill people, people kill people. He even admits that with the next sentence after the one I excerpted about driving a truck into said crowd. But I would take it one step further and say that free will kills people. The only time a gun doesn’t kill out of free will is when it’s an accident, and such accidents should never happen. You don’t clean and inspect a loaded gun for example.
If this goof is some kind of California liberal loon, I wonder if they think that protestors at an abortion clinic are exercising free will. I suspect they would hesitate for a moment.
“Stop attributing stuff to us that isn’t there.”
_________________________
We can’t stop it, we have no free will, duh!
Atheists are so weak.
Good. So when I see some little lilly-livered idiot doing some leftist thing in the street, I can ‘off’ him and truthfully claim that I had no choice. Can I start with that “scientist”?
“It’s accepted that a person who causes a fatal traffic accident while in the grip of a seizure should not be charged with murder.”
But at the same time, ignoring the fact that they got behind the wheel of a projectile going at high speeds when they could without warning have even a petit mal seizure, at the least, that could cause a distraction from defensive or safely driving should not be behind the wheel. And if they know this, should they commit themselves to getting there. And if they are not allowed to by law, and they get behind the wheel, are they not responsible for the outcome?
Medication for this illness is like for any medication. It works in about 70% of the patients. But even thy have to be on the alert for problems and in many cases shouldn’t be driving or handling possible dangerous equipment.
A really good article on this is here:
https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/diseases/17636-epilepsy
wy69
Without doing any research I would say we do have free will
but it comes, to each of us individually, with strings attached.
The factors that influence these strings are, intelligence, psychology, environment, but mostly traits which we inherit from our parents.
Free Choice is definite..”free will” ...well maybe as in “free beer” .....
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