Tag: Dan Falk on free will

man standing in front of various paths, needing to make a decision to move forward in life. Generative Ai.

^{Type
post

News
Date
June 22, 2025

Categorized
Evolution, Free will, Panpsychism, Physics

Tagged
Dan Falk on free will, Kevin Mitchell, Robert Sapolsky}

Today’s Free Will Debate Shows How Science Culture is Changing

_{The fact that this Sapolsky–Mitchell debate is still raging shows that eliminative materialism and physicalism are experiencing setbacks in our philosophy of science culture today} _{News
June 22, 2025

5

Evolution, Free will, Panpsychism, Physics}

Interestingly, Mitchell uses evolution to establish free will. Most uses of the concept would be to deny or diminish it, as in “We evolved to be violent,” etc.

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} _{Denyse O'Leary
May 22, 2024

6

Free will, Neuroscience}

The debate will surely continue but it’s remarkable that it’s even HELD at Scientific American. Wasn’t materialism supposed to have disproved free will by now?

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?} _{Denyse O'Leary
November 5, 2023

6

Evolution, Free will}

It appears that materialists have not been able to simply disprove free will, so Mitchell seems to be trying to shape an evolution theory to fit it.