
CategoryFree will


Free Will: A Materialist Thinks It Might Somehow Be Real
Psychiatrist Ralph Lewis thinks that Darwinian evolution can explain human consciousness but now hesitates to debunk free willEarlier this year, University of Toronto psychiatrist Ralph Lewis wrote a two-part series at Psychology Today titled “The Strongest Neuroscience Arguments in the Free Will Debate” (here and here). He looked at Mitchell (yes) and Sapolsky (no), both of whom published serious books on the topic in 2023. And he concluded, For now, for practical purposes, given our current level of incomplete understanding of the complexities of the brain’s decision-making processes, and our inability to predict human behaviors in most situations, we might as well regard ourselves as having free will—or rather, degrees of freedom. We do know that our brain has highly evolved systems for self-control—even for those of us who struggle with this relatively more than others, and Read More ›

Alien Hand Syndrome? Relax. There Is No Alien Mind
The syndrome has been used to argue for the idea that split brain patients really have two separate minds and maybe wills afterward
Neurology Prof Robert Sapolsky Insists There Is No Free Will
We are controlled by our genes, by our prefrontal cortexes, and we can’t choose to change anything. Or can we?
Michael Egnor: The Neuroscience Evidence for Free Will
You ask a hundred neuroscientists about Libet's work and 95% will say he disproved free will, when he did exactly the opposite
Trying To Refute Free Will Without Being Sure What It Is…
Stephen Barr offers some thoughts on neuroscientist Robert Sapolsky’s Determined, which argues against free will
Can Free Will and Predestination Both Be True?
Seemingly contradictory arguments can sometimes be resolved from a higher level perspective. Quantum mechanics vs. classical physics provides an illustration
Philosopher: Why Brain Science Does Not Eliminate Free Will
Tim Bayne looks at what we can logically deduce from the famous Libet experiments
Free Will: Never Let Mere Atoms Near a Keyboard
No free will — and therefore no responsibility — may sound more “cool” than free will but we had better be careful about what we admire
At Scientific American, free will seems very much alive
The concept is incompatible with their “mind is just the brain” thesis but they can’t let go of it anyway
My Reply to Free Will Deniers: Show Me
It is helpful to consider the question in this way—not “do we have free will?,” but rather “what does it mean to believe we don’t have free will?”
How Neuroscience Disproved Free Will and Then Proved It Again
In this excerpt from Minding the Brain (2023), neuroscientist Cristi L. S. Cooper discusses the discovery of “free won’t” — the decision NOT to do something
Once a Supporter, Science Writer Airs Doubts About Free Will
ChatGPT has set John Horgan thinking about whether he is just "ChatGPT-Me" himself
The Free Will Debate Really Heated Up This Year
Many commentators are weighing in; surprisingly, perhaps, well-known materialists are disputing the claim that there is no free will
Why Free Will Denial is Self-Refuting
If free will deniers are right, their denial of free will is just a biological ink stain.
Can Evolution Create Free Will? A Neurologist Says Yes
Could the impersonal natural force of evolution shape hierarchies in the human cerebral cortex so that we have the free will that it does not itself have?
Neuroscience Has Never Provided Much Evidence for Materialism
In a chapter of the new book, Minding the Brain, neurosurgeon Michael Egnor points out that many great neuroscientists were non-materialists
Free Will: What Are the Real Reasons to Believe in It?
Some say that free will might be a useful delusion but neuroscience provides sound reasons to believe that it is real.University of Missouri psychology professor Kennon Sheldon’s message is neatly summed up in an opening statement: “Regardless of whether humans do or don’t have free will, psychological research shows it’s beneficial to act as if you do”. The author of Freely Determined: What the New Psychology of the Self Teaches Us About How to Live (Basic Books, 2022) responds to philosophers who say that we do not have free will: All my life, I’ve struggled with the question of whether humans have ‘free will’. It catalysed my decision to become a psychologist and continues to inspire my research to this day, especially as it relates to the kinds of goals people set for themselves, and the effects of goal-striving on Read More ›

Escape from Spiderhead and the Question of Love
Is love more than a chemical reaction and are humans more than machines made of meat?Brave New World, a speculative work by British writer Aldous Huxley, explores a society where people are conditioned via drugs and genetic engineering to live stable, highly pleasurable, but totally meaningless lives. One pop of a pill, and negative feelings like sadness, anger, or envy vanish. In the brave new world, “everyone belongs to everyone else,” and pleasure supplants purpose. A Story for Our Age That book was written in 1932. Fast forward to the twenty-first century and another fictional work, albeit shorter, goes arguably even deeper than Huxley’s magnum opus. The short story Escape from Spiderhead by George Saunders is about a group of inmates being tested by mood-altering drugs in a facility nicknamed “Spiderhead” for its nebulous layout. Read More ›

Sean Carroll: “How Could an Immaterial Mind Affect the Body?”
The well known physicist thinks free will is nonsense. But has he investigated the classical understanding of causation?Sean Carroll is a theoretical physicist at Johns Hopkins University who takes an atheist and materialist philosophical perspective on nature and on science. I have disagreed with him often — I’m in no position to judge his scientific acumen, but his philosophical acumen leaves a lot to be desired. An example of this is a question he asks in a recent documentary about free will (which I haven’t watched yet). In the trailer for the movie, Carroll asks, How in the world does the immaterial mind affect the physical body? Carroll’s denial of libertarian free will is based on this question, and of course, he believes that the immaterial mind does not exist and, if it did exist, could not Read More ›