The Illusion of Free Will
Page 13
Sir Alfred Jules "Freddie" Ayer (1910–1989) was a British philosopher known for his promotion of logical positivism, particularly in his books Language, Truth, and Logic (1936) and The Problem of Knowledge (1956). Ayer wrote two books on the philosopher Bertrand Russell, Russell and Moore: The Analytic Heritage (1971) and Russell (1972). He also wrote an introductory book on the Philosophy Of David Hume and a short biography of Voltaire. He was an atheist.
Patricia Smith Churchland, an eliminative materialist philosopher has famously remarked about Penrose's theories that "Pixie dust in the synapses is about as explanatorily powerful as quantum coherence in the microtubules."
Carneades (214-129) was an academic skeptic and head of the Platonic Academy in the 2nd century BCE. Carneades (and Cicero) strongly defend chance as adequate to deny the causal determinism and fate that worried the Epicureans.
Randolph Clarke is a Professor of Philosophy at Florida State University. His interests are human agency, particularly intentional action, free will, and moral responsibility. Clarke's book, Libertarian Accounts of Free Will, examines the contributions of indeterminism to free will models. He defends such libertarian views from common objections, but he finds the accounts inadequate. "If responsibility isn’t compatible with determinism, then," he thinks, "it isn’t possible." He supports the idea of a narrow incompatibilist–an incompatibilist on free will and a compatibilist on moral responsibility.
John Martin Fischer is best known for the idea of semicompatibilism–the idea that moral responsibility is compatible with determinism, whether free will is or is not compatible. He has written three books on moral responsibility and compiled what is the largest anthology of articles on free will, determinism, and moral responsibility–his four-volume, 46-contributor, 72-entry, 1300+ pages, Free Will, a reference work in the Routledge Critical Concepts in Philosophy series.
Harry Gordon Frankfurt is an American philosopher and professor of philosophy at Princeton University and is a hard determinist. Frankfurt defends Compatibilism by providing examples of agents who could not have done otherwise but are nevertheless clearly responsible so essentially he separates responsibility from free will.
Frankfurt's basic claim is as follows: "The principle of alternate possibilities is false. A person may well be morally responsible for what he has done even though he could not have done otherwise. The principle's plausibility is an illusion, which can be made to vanish by bringing the relevant moral phenomena into sharper focus."
Thomas Hobbs (1588–1679) His 1651 book Leviathan established the foundation for most of Western political philosophy from the perspective of social contract theory. Hobbes has been accused of atheism, but often denied it. Hobbes did indeed take positions which were in strong disagreement with church teachings of his time. For example, Hobbes argued repeatedly that there are no incorporeal substances, and that all things, including human thoughts, and even God, heaven, and hell are corporeal, "matter in motion".
David Hume (1711–1776) was a Scottish philosopher, historian, economist, and essayist known especially for his philosophical empiricism and skepticism. He was one of the most important figures in the history of Western philosophy and the Scottish Enlightenment. Beginning with his A Treatise of Human Nature (1739), Hume strove to create a total naturalistic "science of man" that examined the psychological basis of human nature. In stark opposition to the rationalists who preceded him, most notably Descartes, he concluded that desire rather than reason governed human behavior.
Pierre-Simon LaPlace: (1979-1827) was a French mathematician and astronomer whose work was pivotal to the development of mathematical astronomy and statistics. LaPlace invented the term nomological determinism.
Peter van Inwagen (1942-) is an American analytic philosopher and the John Cardinal O'Hara Professor of Philosophy at the University of Notre Dame. His 1983 monograph An Essay on Free Will[1] played an important role in rehabilitating libertarianism with respect to free will in mainstream analytical philosophy.[2] In the book, van Inwagen introduces the term incompatibilism about free will and determinism, to stand in contrast to Compatibilism–the view that free will is compatible with determinism.
Immanuel Kant couldn't manage the belief we did not have free will so he invented the noumenon, in which free will existed in spite of our inability to access it.
Steven Pinker is a psychologist and prolific writer who occasionally comments on free will. In his 1997 How the Mind Works, he condensed the standard argument against free will into a single sentence. Concerning the quantum mind theory, he states: "a random event does not fit the concept of free will any more than a lawful one does, and could not serve as the long-sought locus of moral responsibility." (p.54) Pinker is a strong supporter of the "computational theory of mind," his "recurring metaphor of the mind as machine."
Derk Pereboom: is associated with Libertarianism, an incompatibilist position that argues that free will is logically incompatible with a deterministic universe and that agents have free will and therefore determinism is false.
Karl Popper (1902–1994) was an Austro-British philosopher and professor at the London School of Economics. He argued that the line of demarcation between science and non-science is falsifiability. He is known for his theories on free will mind/body. Popper and John Eccles speculated on the problem of free will for many years generally agreeing on an interactionist dualist theory of mind. However, although Popper was a body-mind dualist, he did not think that the mind is a substance separate from the body: he thought that mental or psychological properties or aspects of people are distinct from physical ones.
Thomas Reid:(1710– 1796) is a religiously trained Scottish philosopher and a contemporary of David Hume, was the founder of the Scottish School of Common Sense and played an integral role in the Scottish Enlightenment
Galen John Strawson (born 1952) is a British analytic philosopher and literary critic who works primarily on philosophy of mind, metaphysics (including free will, panpsychism, the mind-body problem, and the self), John Locke, David Hume and Kant.
Peter Strawson (1919-2006), an English philosopher, said he could make no sense of ideas like free will and determinism, pointing out that whatever the deep metaphysical truth on these issues, people would not give up talking about and feeling moral responsibility, praise and blame, guilt and pride, crime and punishment, gratitude, resentment, and forgiveness.
Dr. Victor Stenger, a physicist, argues that the effect of atomic and subatomic level of quantum mechanics should be negligible on a larger scale of neurons, synapses, dendrites, and brain structures.
Debates
Freedomain Radio: the most infuriating pseudo-debate I have ever listened to. It’s not a debate but an exercise in sophistry, logical fallacies, and a set-up of three hacks with a seasoned debating pro. Stefan Molyneux comes across as a bully and an idiot. Pick on someone you’re your size. [YouTube Link]
The Science and Philosophy of Free Will Center for Inquiry 2012 [YouTube Link]
Daniel Dennett–Free Will Determinism and Evolution [YouTube Link] How to dissolve the problem of Free Will and Determinism [YouTube Link] 2012
Sam Harris on Free Will [YouTube Link] 2013
Free Will Determinism and Choice: Lecture Series [YouTube Link] 2012
Free will and predestination - Dr. Chuck Missler (1 hr 50 min) Sovereignty of God; Sovereignty of Man. Biblical perspective of God knowing the future yet we have free will [YouTube Link]
Free will notes II [YouTube Link]
Numerous free PDFs on Free Will
Robert Kane's "A Contemporary Introduction to Free Will (208 pages) [PDF Link]
Randolph Clark, and the Libertarian Accounts Of Free Will (165 pages) [PDF Link]
Thomas Pink A Very Short Introduction (2003) (143 pages) [PDF Link]
Did My Neurons Make Me Do It? Nancy Murphy and Warren S Brown (353 pages) [Amazon Link]
The Brute Within by Hendrik Lorenz (240 pages) [PDF Link]
Other Resour
ces on Free Will
The Information Philosopher is clearly pro-free will (a supporter of the quantum mind theory of free will); despite the clear bias, it has an extraordinary wealth of information on a wide variety of philosophers and scientists. (Link)
Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Free Will [Link]
Review: Why No Theist Should Be a Compatibilist [YouTube Link]
Very Short Introductions [on hundreds of scientific and philosophical topics] [Link]
Does the death penalty deter crime?
Daniel S. Nagin, PhD, Professor of Public Policy and Statistics at Carnegie Mellon University, and John V. Pepper, PhD, Professor of Economics at the University of Virginia, wrote in their 2012 book Deterrence and the Death Penalty:
"...[R]esearch to date of the effect of capital punishment on crime is not informative about whether capital punishment decreases, increases, or has no effect on crime rates. Therefore, the committee recommends that these studies not be used to inform deliberations requiring judgments about the effect of the death penalty on crime rates. Consequently, claims that research demonstrates that capital punishment decreases or increases the crime rate by a specified amount or has no effect on the crime rate should not influence policy judgments about capital punishment."
In 2010 23 countries carried out executions. US (46) was third, behind Viet Nam and Yemen (53).
Another 2010 statistic has: China (thousands), Iran (252) North Korea (60) Yemen (53) USA (46) Saudi Arabia (27).
The crime rate in the United Arab Emirates is relatively low compared to more highly industrialized nations; vehicle break-ins in the UAE are rare. Although the statistic is old at approx. 3 per 100,000 (1999) with a population of about 4 million that puts the murder rate at 120 per year. Compare that to the top ten US cities:
City
% per 100K
2012
1
Flint MI
64.9
66
2
Detroit MI
54.6
386
3
New Orleans LA
53.5
193
4
St. Louis MO
35.5
113
5
Baltimore MD
35
217
6
Birmingham AL
33.7
72
7
Newark NJ
33.1
92
7
Oakland CA
33.1
131
8
Baton Rouge LA
28.9
67
9
Cleveland OH
24.6
97
10
Memphis TN
24.1
157
Which is more effective, eternal damnation or chopping off fingers?
January 24 2013: A 29-year-old man, convicted of being part of a gang that carried out burglaries, has three fingers amputated in a public square in Shiraz, Iran. The man's sentence also included three years in prison and confiscation of his property.
I’m just asking the question.
Top 50 Non-Christian Countries
Do these people really have free will to adopt another religion? Beside the fact that the Koran states the penalty for apostasy is death, the peer pressure, indoctrination, combined with any genetic predisposition to conformity or the supernatural provides what I call damnation by probability. Citing anecdotal incidences of conversions does not reflect the magnitude of the problem. Christians must believe that everyone can freely choose or they would have to admit for one, it’s not working, and two, it’s just cruel and unjust.
Somalia
1,000
0.01%
Yemen
3,000
0.01%
Afghanistan
6,250
0.02%
Western Sahara
200
0.04%
Maldives
300
0.08%
Turkey
74,000
0.09%
Mauritania
5,000
0.14%
Tunisia
24,000
0.20%
Bangladesh
420,000
0.30%
Iran
300,000
0.40%
Thailand
471,000
0.70%
Nepal
269,000
0.90%
Bhutan
7,000
1.00%
Cambodia
148,000
1.00%
Tajikistan
99,000
1.40%
Pakistan
5,327,000
1.60%
Algeria
270,000
2%
Japan
3,548,000
2.00%
Libya
131,000
2.00%
Comoros
15,000
2.10%
Mongolia
58,000
2.10%
Morocco
651,000
2.10%
Laos
145,000
2.20%
Oman
73,000
2.50%
India
31,850,000
2.60%
Iraq
944,000
3.00%
Israel
266,000
3.50%
Korea, North
480,000
4.00%
Azerbaijan
450,000
4.80%
People's Republic of China
67,070,000
5%
Mali
726,000
5.00%
Niger
795,000
5.00%
Uzbekistan
1,390,000
5.00%
Saudi Arabia
1,493,000
5.50%
Djibouti
53,000
6.00%
Jordan
388,000
6.00%
Senegal
900,000
7.00%
Sri Lanka
1,531,000
7.50%
Myanmar
3,790,000
7.90%
Vietnam
6,868,000
8.00%
Indonesia[4]
21,160,000
8.80%
Bahrain
77,000
9.00%
Gambia
158,000
9.00%
Turkmenistan
466,000
9.00%
United Arab Emirates
424,000
9.00%
Sudan
3,062,000
9.60%
Guinea
1,032,000
10.00%
Guinea-Bissau
165,000
10.00%
Syria
2,251,000
10.00%
Hong Kong
710,000
10.10%
Joel Osteen and Billy Graham, on their television appearances on the Larry King show, both refused to answer the question if everyone who did not believe in Jesus Christ was going to hell. They said, “It is up to God, I do not judge.” These interviews are available on YouTube. Technically, this is a cop-out, so I give them my Pick and Choose Christian award and an honorary Secular Humanist pin–they actually used their reason and knew what a ludicrous idea this is–to damn entire cultures for their indigenous beliefs.
Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.
–John 14:6 (NIV)
Appendix II
Biblical Predestination Quo
tes
The biblical concept of predestination (Calvinism) assumes we are destined for either heaven or hell from the moment of birth. If this topic interests you, watch a Calvinist versus Arminianism/Baptist debate on YouTube. [YouTube Link 1] while you are watching it remember this verse:
For God is not the author of confusion, but of peace, as in all churches of the saints.
–1 Corinthians 14:33
Quotes For Predestination:
For whom He foreknew, He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son, that He might be the firstborn among many brethren. 30 Moreover whom He predestined, these He also called; whom He called, these He also justified; and whom He justified, these He also glorified.
–Romans 8:21-30
For He says to Moses, “I will have mercy on whomever I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whomever I will have compassion.”[a] 16 So then it is not of him who wills, nor of him who runs, but of God who shows mercy."
–Rom 9:15-16
Does not the potter have power over the clay, from the same lump to make one vessel for honor and another for dishonor?
–Rom 9:21
For the children not yet being born, nor having done any good or evil, that the purpose of God according to election might stand, not of works but of Him who calls), 12 it was said to her, The older shall serve the younger.”[a] 13 As it is written, “Jacob I have loved, but Esau I have hated.