TagDeterminism
Trying To Disprove Free Will Shows That Materialism Doesn’t Work
If you have a metaphysical theory and it contradicts science, logic, and everyday experience, then your metaphysics should be abandonedBiologist Jerry Coyne, who is also an atheist activist, offers another post denying free will. Journalist Oliver Burkeman published an essay at the The Guardian last week, asking, “The clockwork universe: is free will an illusion?”, quoting Coyne among others. Coyne, who believes that free will is indeed an illusion, offers support at his blog. Read at your leisure but note: He ignores critical science issues around free will, including the following: 1. Nature is not deterministic. The fact that nature is not predetermined in detail has been shown quite convincingly by the experimental confirmation of Bell’s theorem in quantum mechanics. Succinctly, over the past 50 years, at least 17 teams of researchers have asked and answered the question: does Read More ›
A Materialist Gives Up on Determinism
Evolutionary biologist Jerry Coyne undercuts his own argument against free will by admitting that quantum phenomena are realEvolutionary biologist Jerry Coyne has denied free will for years. But most recently, he has said something that puts the whole matter in doubt. A bit of background: Free will simply cannot be real if determinism is true, that is, if everything in nature falls like dominoes after the first one is pushed: If nature is truly like that, our acts, like those of the dominoes, are wholly determined by natural history and physical laws that we do not control. Nearly all arguments against free will depend critically on determinism. But there is a central problem with determinism: It is clear from physics that determinism in nature is not true. In 1964, theoretical physicist John Bell (1928–1990) proposed relatively simple Read More ›
No Free Will Means No Justice
Materialist biologist Jerry Coyne doesn’t seem to understand what denying free will would mean for the criminal justice systemWithout free will, no one is innocent. Who asks cattle on the way to the abattoir if they are guilty or innocent?
Read More ›
Hulu’s Devs Series: Where They Get Determinism Wrong
Devs disposes of a key limitation of computers that can supposedly predict the future with psychobabbleCall me a nitpicker: As a computer engineer, I must say, computers cannot predict the future.
Devs Both Grips and Challenges Hulu Viewers
I had fully expected Devs to be yet another series about sentient AI but it is something fresherAlex Garland departs from conventional sci-fi themes to create a thought-provoking film, packed with action and based on a challenging underlying philosophy.
Read More ›
Jerry Coyne Just Can’t Give Up Denying Free Will
Coyne’s denial of free will, based on determinism, is science denial and junk metaphysicsSome day, I predict, there will be a considerable psychiatric literature on the denial of free will. It’s essentially a delusion dressed up as science. To insist that your neurotransmitters completely control your choices is no different than insisting that your television or your iphone control your thoughts. It’s crazy.
Read More ›
But Is Determinism True?
Does science show that we fated to want whatever we want?Modern science—both theoretical and experimental—strongly supports the reality of free will.
Read More ›
Quantum Randomness Gives Nature Free Will
Whether or not quantum randomness explains how our brains work, it may help us create unbreakable encryption codesWhen I was boy, my father explained free will and predestination to me: I dig a fence post hole. · Did I create the hole because of my own free will? · Or was the hole already there and I simply removed the dirt? If true, the hole was predestined. The question cannot be answered by examining the evidence. In philosophy terms, it is “empirically unanswerable.” That is the sort of stuff that philosophers debate. Religious people might point to scripture to support one conclusion over the other.1 In physics, however, quantum randomness offers a definitive answer to the question of predestination vs. free will—for subatomic particles. In the world of classical physics (Isaac Newton’s physics), it can be argued Read More ›
Has Neuroscience Disproved Thinking?
A philosopher argues that Nobel Prize-winning research shows that the theory of mind is just another illusion, useful for survival and success
Can free will even be an illusion?
Michael Egnor reiterates the freeing implications of quantum indeterminacyMany say so. For example, at Cosmos, senior artificial intelligence research scientist Alfredo Metere explains, … there is a causal relationship between the Big Bang and us. In other words, free will is not allowed, and all of our actions are just a mere consequence of that first event. Such a view is known as “determinism”, or “super-determinism” (if one finds it productive to reinvent the wheel). He asserts that today we know the universe to be chaotic. Because the cosmos is clearly chaotic, we can observe time-reversibility only locally, rather than globally. This in turn means that free will is an inevitable illusion for us humans, due to our subjective perception of the universe, rather than its innermost nature. Read More ›