{"id":905,"date":"2003-06-03T09:43:59","date_gmt":"2003-06-03T17:43:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/archives\/2003\/06\/03\/i-was-predestined-to-believe-in-free-will\/"},"modified":"2003-06-03T09:43:59","modified_gmt":"2003-06-03T17:43:59","slug":"i-was-predestined-to-believe-in-free-will","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/archives\/2003\/06\/03\/i-was-predestined-to-believe-in-free-will","title":{"rendered":"I Was Predestined To Believe In Free Will"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ques\u00adtions about free will ever keep you up at night? I just read a great ram\u00adbling round\u00adtable of an essay called Faith and The Sci\u00adence of Free Will<\/a>.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a response to an essay by John Hor\u00adgan in the New York Times, which reads in part: A cou\u00adple of books I\u2019ve been read\u00ading late\u00adly have left me brood\u00ading over the pos\u00adsi\u00adbil\u00adi\u00adty that free will is as much a myth as divine jus\u00adtice. The chief offend\u00ader is The Illu\u00adsion of Con\u00adscious Will, by Dr. Daniel M. Weg\u00adn\u00ader, a psy\u00adchol\u00ado\u00adgist at Har\u00advard.\u2026 We think of will as a force, but actu\u00adal\u00adly, Dr. Weg\u00adn\u00ader says, it is a feeling\u2014\u201cmerely a feel\u00ading,\u201d as he puts it\u2014of con\u00adtrol over our actions. I think, \u201cI\u2019m going to get up now,\u201d and when I do a moment lat\u00ader, I cred\u00adit that feel\u00ading with hav\u00ading been the insti\u00adgat\u00ading cause. But as we all know, cor\u00adre\u00adla\u00adtion does not equal cau\u00adsa\u00adtion.<\/i><\/p>\n

The exchanges (sev\u00ader\u00adal peo\u00adple com\u00adment) are insight\u00adful, such as this one: My response to this is based on The Voli\u00adtion\u00adal Brain: Towards a Neu\u00adro\u00adscience of Free Will, edit\u00aded by Ben\u00adjamin Libet (Imprint Aca\u00add\u00ade\u00adm\u00adic, 2000). As I under\u00adstand it, Libet was actu\u00adal\u00adly one of the sci\u00aden\u00adtists involved in the exper\u00adi\u00adments that Dr. Weg\u00adn\u00ader refers to. The fact that Libet\u2019s posi\u00adtion is nowhere men\u00adtioned makes me very sus\u00adpi\u00adcious of Weg\u00adn\u00ader\u2019s agen\u00adda.<\/i><\/p>\n

The con\u00adscious will appears to be ini\u00adti\u00adat\u00aded by an uncon\u00adscious brain event. If the exper\u00adi\u00adment is cor\u00adrect, then this calls into ques\u00adtion free will. But Libet says the con\u00adscious will can veto these sub\u00adcon\u00adscious deci\u00adsions (see page 51 of The Voli\u00adtion\u00adal Brain). The con\u00adscious veto may itself have a pre\u00adced\u00ading uncon\u00adscious process. But this would become an uncon\u00adscious choice of which we become con\u00adscious rather than a con\u00adscious\u00adly causal event (52). The con\u00adscious veto is a con\u00adtrol func\u00adtion, not just sim\u00adply becom\u00ading aware of a wish to act. The role of con\u00adscious free will would be, then, not to ini\u00adti\u00adate a vol\u00adun\u00adtary act, but rather to con\u00adtrol whether the act takes place. The eth\u00adi\u00adcal impli\u00adca\u00adtions of this are actu\u00adal\u00adly con\u00adsis\u00adtent with most eth\u00adi\u00adcal and reli\u00adgious sys\u00adtems. Most of the Ten Com\u00admand\u00adments are thou-shall-not com\u00admand\u00adments (54). The exper\u00adi\u00adments cit\u00aded by Weg\u00adn\u00ader give us no indi\u00adca\u00adtion that actions can\u00adnot be con\u00adscious\u00adly con\u00adtrolled. <\/p>\n

Pret\u00adty cool stuff. You can read an expand\u00aded ver\u00adsion<\/a> of the essay here.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ques\u00adtions about free will ever keep you up at night? I just read a great ram\u00adbling round\u00adtable of an essay called Faith and The Sci\u00adence of Free Will. It\u2019s a response to an essay by John Hor\u00adgan in the New York Times, which reads in part: A cou\u00adple of books I\u2019ve been read\u00ading late\u00adly have \u2026 Con\u00adtin\u00adue read\u00ading \u201cI Was Pre\u00addes\u00adtined To Believe In Free Will\u201d<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wp_typography_post_enhancements_disabled":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-905","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reasonable-answers-to-honest-questions"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6Ded-eB","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/905","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=905"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/905\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=905"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=905"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=905"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}