Free Will As An Open Scientific Problem
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Free Will As An Open Scientific Problem
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Author : Mark Balaguer
language : en
Publisher: MIT Press
Release Date : 2012-01-13
Free Will As An Open Scientific Problem written by Mark Balaguer and has been published by MIT Press this book supported file pdf, txt, epub, kindle and other format this book has been release on 2012-01-13 with Philosophy categories.
An argument that the problem of free will boils down to an open scientific question about the causal histories of certain kinds of neural events. In this largely antimetaphysical treatment of free will and determinism, Mark Balaguer argues that the philosophical problem of free will boils down to an open scientific question about the causal histories of certain kinds of neural events. In the course of his argument, Balaguer provides a naturalistic defense of the libertarian view of free will. The metaphysical component of the problem of free will, Balaguer argues, essentially boils down to the question of whether humans possess libertarian free will. Furthermore, he argues that, contrary to the traditional wisdom, the libertarian question reduces to a question about indeterminacy—in particular, to a straightforward empirical question about whether certain neural events in our heads are causally undetermined in a certain specific way; in other words, Balaguer argues that the right kind of indeterminacy would bring with it all of the other requirements for libertarian free will. Finally, he argues that because there is no good evidence as to whether or not the relevant neural events are undetermined in the way that's required, the question of whether human beings possess libertarian free will is a wide-open empirical question.
Free Will
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Author : Mark Balaguer
language : en
Publisher: MIT Press
Release Date : 2014-02-14
Free Will written by Mark Balaguer and has been published by MIT Press this book supported file pdf, txt, epub, kindle and other format this book has been release on 2014-02-14 with Philosophy categories.
A philosopher considers whether the scientific and philosophical arguments against free will are reason enough to give up our belief in it. In our daily life, it really seems as though we have free will, that what we do from moment to moment is determined by conscious decisions that we freely make. You get up from the couch, you go for a walk, you eat chocolate ice cream. It seems that we're in control of actions like these; if we are, then we have free will. But in recent years, some have argued that free will is an illusion. The neuroscientist (and best-selling author) Sam Harris and the late Harvard psychologist Daniel Wegner, for example, claim that certain scientific findings disprove free will. In this engaging and accessible volume in the Essential Knowledge series, the philosopher Mark Balaguer examines the various arguments and experiments that have been cited to support the claim that human beings don't have free will. He finds them to be overstated and misguided. Balaguer discusses determinism, the view that every physical event is predetermined, or completely caused by prior events. He describes several philosophical and scientific arguments against free will, including one based on Benjamin Libet's famous neuroscientific experiments, which allegedly show that our conscious decisions are caused by neural events that occur before we choose. He considers various religious and philosophical views, including the philosophical pro-free-will view known as compatibilism. Balaguer concludes that the anti-free-will arguments put forward by philosophers, psychologists, and neuroscientists simply don't work. They don't provide any good reason to doubt the existence of free will. But, he cautions, this doesn't necessarily mean that we have free will. The question of whether we have free will remains an open one; we simply don't know enough about the brain to answer it definitively.
The Free Will Problem In Modern Thought
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Author : Johnson William H
language : en
Publisher: Palala Press
Release Date : 2015-12-14
The Free Will Problem In Modern Thought written by Johnson William H and has been published by Palala Press this book supported file pdf, txt, epub, kindle and other format this book has been release on 2015-12-14 with categories.
This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work.This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work.As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.
The Problem Of Free Will
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Author : Mathew Iredale
language : en
Publisher: Routledge
Release Date : 2012
The Problem Of Free Will written by Mathew Iredale and has been published by Routledge this book supported file pdf, txt, epub, kindle and other format this book has been release on 2012 with Determinism (Philosophy) categories.
Whether human choices and actions are causally determined of are in a way free is one of the trickiest questions in philosophy. Undaunted, Mathew Iredale presents a clear, comprehensive and concise introduction to the topic.
Free Will
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Author : D J O'Connor
language : en
Publisher: Springer
Release Date : 1972-01-01
Free Will written by D J O'Connor and has been published by Springer this book supported file pdf, txt, epub, kindle and other format this book has been release on 1972-01-01 with Philosophy categories.
The Routledge Companion To Free Will
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Author : Kevin Timpe
language : en
Publisher: Routledge
Release Date : 2016-11-18
The Routledge Companion To Free Will written by Kevin Timpe and has been published by Routledge this book supported file pdf, txt, epub, kindle and other format this book has been release on 2016-11-18 with Philosophy categories.
Questions concerning free will are intertwined with issues in almost every area of philosophy, from metaphysics to philosophy of mind to moral philosophy, and are also informed by work in different areas of science (principally physics, neuroscience and social psychology). Free will is also a perennial concern of serious thinkers in theology and in non-western traditions. Because free will can be approached from so many different perspectives and has implications for so many debates, a comprehensive survey needs to encompass an enormous range of approaches. This book is the first to draw together leading experts on every aspect of free will, from those who are central to the current philosophical debates, to non-western perspectives, to scientific contributions and to those who know the rich history of the subject. Chapter 37 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.
Why Free Will Is Real
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Author : Christian List
language : en
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Release Date : 2019-05-06
Why Free Will Is Real written by Christian List and has been published by Harvard University Press this book supported file pdf, txt, epub, kindle and other format this book has been release on 2019-05-06 with Philosophy categories.
A crystal-clear, scientifically rigorous argument for the existence of free will, challenging what many scientists and scientifically minded philosophers believe. Philosophers have argued about the nature and the very existence of free will for centuries. Today, many scientists and scientifically minded commentators are skeptical that it exists, especially when it is understood to require the ability to choose between alternative possibilities. If the laws of physics govern everything that happens, they argue, then how can our choices be free? Believers in free will must be misled by habit, sentiment, or religious doctrine. Why Free Will Is Real defies scientific orthodoxy and presents a bold new defense of free will in the same naturalistic terms that are usually deployed against it. Unlike those who defend free will by giving up the idea that it requires alternative possibilities to choose from, Christian List retains this idea as central, resisting the tendency to defend free will by watering it down. He concedes that free will and its prerequisites—intentional agency, alternative possibilities, and causal control over our actions—cannot be found among the fundamental physical features of the natural world. But, he argues, that’s not where we should be looking. Free will is a “higher-level” phenomenon found at the level of psychology. It is like other phenomena that emerge from physical processes but are autonomous from them and not best understood in fundamental physical terms—like an ecosystem or the economy. When we discover it in its proper context, acknowledging that free will is real is not just scientifically respectable; it is indispensable for explaining our world.
Is Science Compatible With Free Will
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Author : Antoine Suarez
language : en
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Release Date : 2012-12-22
Is Science Compatible With Free Will written by Antoine Suarez and has been published by Springer Science & Business Media this book supported file pdf, txt, epub, kindle and other format this book has been release on 2012-12-22 with Psychology categories.
Anyone who claims the right ‘to choose how to live their life’ excludes any purely deterministic description of their brain in terms of genes, chemicals or environmental influences. For example, when an author of a text expresses his thoughts, he assumes that, in typing the text, he governs the firing of the neurons in his brain and the movement of his fingers through the exercise of his own free will: what he writes is not completely pre-determined at the beginning of the universe. Yet in the field of neuroscience today, determinism dominates. There is a conflict between the daily life conviction that a human being has free will, and deterministic neuroscience. When faced with this conflict two alternative positions are possible: Either human freedom is an illusion, or deterministic neuroscience is not the last word on the brain and will eventually be superseded by a neuroscience that admits processes not completely determined by the past. This book investigates whether it is possible to have a science in which there is room for human freedom. The book generally concludes that the world and the brain are governed to some extent by non-material agencies, and limited consciousness does not abolish free will and responsibility. The authors present perspectives coming from different disciplines (Neuroscience, Quantumphysics and Philosophy) and range from those focusing on the scientific background, to those highlighting rather more a philosophical analysis. However, all chapters share a common characteristic: they take current scientific observations and data as a basis from which to draw philosophical implications. It is these features that make this volume unique, an exceptional interdisciplinary approach combining scientific strength and philosophical profundity. We are convinced that it will strongly stimulate the debate and contribute to new insights in the mind-brain relationship.
Powers Time And Free Will
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Author : Christopher J. Austin
language : en
Publisher: Springer Nature
Release Date : 2022-03-28
Powers Time And Free Will written by Christopher J. Austin and has been published by Springer Nature this book supported file pdf, txt, epub, kindle and other format this book has been release on 2022-03-28 with Philosophy categories.
This book brings together twelve original contributions by leading scholars on the much-debated issues of what is free will and how can we exercise it in a world governed by laws of nature. Which conception of laws of nature best fits with how we conceive of free will? And which constraints does our conception of the laws of nature place on how we think of free will? The metaphysics of causation and the metaphysics of dispositions are also explored in this edited volume, in relation to whether they may or may not be game-changers in how we think about both free will and the laws of nature. The volume presents the views of a range of international experts on these issues, and aims at providing the reader with novel approaches to a core problem in philosophy. The target audience is composed by academics and scholars who are interested in an original and contemporary approach to these long-debated issues. Chapters [2] and [4] are available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License via link.springer.com.
On Challenges To Free Will
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Author : Bradford Stockdale
language : en
Publisher:
Release Date : 2020
On Challenges To Free Will written by Bradford Stockdale and has been published by this book supported file pdf, txt, epub, kindle and other format this book has been release on 2020 with Philosophy categories.
Classically the problem of free will has consisted in whether free will is compatible with determinism. More recently, two other problems for free will have become prominent. One is whether free will is incompatible with indeterminism. The other problem is whether free will can exist given our ever-increasing knowledge of how the brain functions. Even if free will is compatible with determinism and indeterminism, it may turn out that humans are not the kind of beings that are able to exercise free will due to the types of brains we have. I address each of the aforementioned problems in my dissertation. In Chapter One I define key terms and provide a brief introduction to the aspects of the free will debate I will focus on. In Chapter Two I push back against recent arguments that Frankfurt-style cases succumb to the flicker defense, and I construct a Frankfurt-style case that overcomes the problems posed by this defense. In Chapter Three I discuss a version of the problem of luck for the libertarian, and I argue that an alleged solution to the problem fails to resolve the problem. In Chapter Four I argue that Libet-style experiments, in as much as they cannot establish epiphenomenalism, cannot be used to show that free will does not exist. In the final chapter I summarize my findings.