Download or read book Exploring the Illusion of Free Will and Moral Responsibility written by Gregg D. Caruso and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2013-07-05 with total page 335 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Exploring the Illusion of Free Will and Moral Responsibility investigates the philosophical and scientific arguments for free will skepticism and their implications. Skepticism about free will and moral responsibility has been on the rise in recent years. In fact, a significant number of philosophers, psychologists, and neuroscientists now either doubt or outright deny the existence of free will and/or moral responsibility—and the list of prominent skeptics appears to grow by the day. Given the profound importance that the concepts of free will and moral responsibility hold in our lives—in understanding ourselves, society, and the law—it is important that we explore what is behind this new wave of skepticism. It is also important that we explore the potential consequences of skepticism for ourselves and society. Edited by Gregg D. Caruso, this collection of new essays brings together an internationally recognized line-up of contributors, most of whom hold skeptical positions of some sort, to display and explore the leading arguments for free will skepticism and to debate their implications.
Download or read book Free Will and Consciousness written by Gregg D. Caruso and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2012 with total page 313 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In recent decades, with advances in the behavioral, cognitive, and neurosciences, the idea that patterns of human behavior may ultimately be due to factors beyond our conscious control has increasingly gained traction and renewed interest in the age-old problem of free will. In this book, Gregg D. Caruso examines both the traditional philosophical problems long associated with the question of free will, such as the relationship between determinism and free will, as well as recent experimental and theoretical work directly related to consciousness and human agency. He argues that our best scientific theories indeed have the consequence that factors beyond our control produce all of the actions we perform and that because of this we do not possess the kind of free will required for genuine or ultimate responsibility. It is further argued that the strong and pervasive belief in free will, which the author considers an illusion, can be accounted for through a careful analysis of our phenomenology and a proper theoretical understanding of consciousness. Indeed, the primary goal of this book is to argue that our subjective feeling of freedom, as reflected in the first-person phenomenology of agentive experience, is an illusion created by certain aspects of our consciousness.
Download or read book The Free Will Delusion written by James B. Miles and published by Troubador Publishing Ltd. This book was released on 2018-10-02 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Poverty is not accident, but design. We are not all equal before the law. And the central message of contemporary ethics is that only some people matter.
Download or read book Free Will and Illusion written by Saul Smilansky and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2000-03-30 with total page 346 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Saul Smilansky presents an original treatment of the problem of free will, which lies at the heart of morality and human self-understanding. He maintains that we have most of the resources we need for a proper understanding of the problem; and the key to it is the role played by illusion. The major traditional philosophical approaches are inadequate, Smilansky argues: their partial insights need to be integrated into a hybrid view, which he calls Fundamental Dualism. Common views about justice, responsibility, human worth, and related notions are radically misguided, and the absurd looms large. We do, however, find some justification for enlightened moral views, and grounding for some of our most cherished views of human nature. The bold and perhaps disturbing claim of Free Will and Illusion is that we could not live adequately with a complete awareness of the truth about human freedom: illusion lies at the centre of the human condition. The necessity of illusion is seen to follow from the basic elements of the free will issue, helping keep our moral and psychological worlds intact. Smilansky offers the challenge of recognizing the centrality of illusion and trying to free ourselves to some extent from it; this is not only a philosophical challenge, but a moral and psychological one as well.
Download or read book Free Will written by Sam Harris and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2012-03-06 with total page 96 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the New York Times bestselling author of The End of Faith, a thought-provoking, "brilliant and witty" (Oliver Sacks) look at the notion of free will—and the implications that it is an illusion. A belief in free will touches nearly everything that human beings value. It is difficult to think about law, politics, religion, public policy, intimate relationships, morality—as well as feelings of remorse or personal achievement—without first imagining that every person is the true source of his or her thoughts and actions. And yet the facts tell us that free will is an illusion. In this enlightening book, Sam Harris argues that this truth about the human mind does not undermine morality or diminish the importance of social and political freedom, but it can and should change the way we think about some of the most important questions in life.
Download or read book The Illusion of Conscious Will written by Daniel M. Wegner and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2003-08-11 with total page 725 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A novel contribution to the age-old debate about free will versus determinism. Do we consciously cause our actions, or do they happen to us? Philosophers, psychologists, neuroscientists, theologians, and lawyers have long debated the existence of free will versus determinism. In this book Daniel Wegner offers a novel understanding of the issue. Like actions, he argues, the feeling of conscious will is created by the mind and brain. Yet if psychological and neural mechanisms are responsible for all human behavior, how could we have conscious will? The feeling of conscious will, Wegner shows, helps us to appreciate and remember our authorship of the things our minds and bodies do. Yes, we feel that we consciously will our actions, Wegner says, but at the same time, our actions happen to us. Although conscious will is an illusion, it serves as a guide to understanding ourselves and to developing a sense of responsibility and morality. Approaching conscious will as a topic of psychological study, Wegner examines the issue from a variety of angles. He looks at illusions of the will—those cases where people feel that they are willing an act that they are not doing or, conversely, are not willing an act that they in fact are doing. He explores conscious will in hypnosis, Ouija board spelling, automatic writing, and facilitated communication, as well as in such phenomena as spirit possession, dissociative identity disorder, and trance channeling. The result is a book that sidesteps endless debates to focus, more fruitfully, on the impact on our lives of the illusion of conscious will.
Download or read book Why Free Will Is Real written by Christian List and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2019-05-06 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Free Will and Consciousness written by Roy Baumeister and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2010-07-09 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume is aimed at readers who wish to move beyond debates about the existence of free will and the efficacy of consciousness and closer to appreciating how free will and consciousness might operate. It draws from philosophy and psychology, the two fields that have grappled most fundamentally with these issues. In this wide-ranging volume, the contributors explore such issues as how free will is connected to rational choice, planning, and self-control; roles for consciousness in decision making; the nature and power of conscious deciding; connections among free will, consciousness, and quantum mechanics; why free will and consciousness might have evolved; how consciousness develops in individuals; the experience of free will; effects on behavior of the belief that free will is an illusion; and connections between free will and moral responsibility in lay thinking. Collectively, these state-of-the-art chapters by accomplished psychologists and philosophers provide a glimpse into the future of research on free will and consciousness.
Download or read book Living Without Free Will written by Derk Pereboom and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2006-11-02 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Argues that morality, meaning and value remain intact even if we are not morally responsible for our actions.
Download or read book Exploring the Illusion of Free Will written by MR George Ortega and published by George Ortega. This book was released on 2011-12-02 with total page 181 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Note: The author, a cognitive-behavioral psychologist, unabashedly leads the reader through extensive review of the work's major themes and concepts. George Ortega's brilliant and compelling Exploring the Illusion of Free Will is likely to become an historic document. Earlier attempts by a relatively few authors have failed to convince the world that free will is an illusion. However, Ortega's edited transcript of the first 18 episodes of his pioneering Exploring the Illusion of Free Will weekly television series seems likely to succeed. Table of Contents Introduction 2 1. How I Came to See My Causal Will 6 2. Proving Causal Will in Real Time 14 3. Morality Within a Causal Will Perspective 21 4. What it All Means 29 5. We Do Not "Experience" Free Will 37 6. How the Hedonic Imperative Makes Free Will Impossible 46 7. How the Unsolicited Participation of the Unconscious Makes Free Will Impossible 54 8. Asking When a Child Gains it Illuminates the Incoherence of the Concept "Free Will" 63 9. Overcoming our Reluctance to Overcome the Illusion of Free Will 7110. Why Change as the Basic Universal Process Makes Free Will Impossible 81 11. The Absurdity of Varying Degrees of Free Will 9112. Why the Concept of Free Will is Incoherent 10013. Overcoming Blame, Guilt, Envy and Arrogance by Overcoming the Illusion of Free Will 10814. Why Both Causality and Randomness Make Free Will Impossible 11715. Why Frankfurt's "Second Order Desires" Do Not Allow for a Free Will 12716. Overcoming the Illusion of Free Will as an Evolutionary Leap in Human Consciousness 13717. Revitalizing Religion through Transcending the Illusion of Free Will 14718. Why Humans Cannot Circumvent Natural Law to Gain a Free WillIntroduction 156From the Introduction - For we who appreciate speedily arriving at the heart of a matter, here's how to disprove any free will argument in two easy steps: 1. Ask the free will believer to give an example of a choice they consider to be freely willed. 2. Ask the free will believer to say whether or not that choice was caused. Congratulations; you've just succeeded. If the free will believer says the choice was caused, the ensuing causal regression makes free will impossible. If the free will believer says the choice was uncaused, that would mean the choice was random. Random thoughts are clearly not what we mean when we refer to a choice as freely willed. You can easily apply this two-step refutation to any, and all, free will arguments. That's the long and short of it; now the details.From the author: Because of the significance of this very likely world-changing book, I've chosen to, as much as possible and practical, not financially profit from it's sale. For my book to be listed on Amazon.com, Amazon's CreateSpace publishing service requires that I set my list price above $7.03, so I've set it to $7.04. I've also published a FREE online, downloadable, edition at Google Books and The Internet Archive. I'd like to publish for Kindle soon, and Amazon's policy requires that authors charge at least 99 cents for the Kindle edition. However, because I've contributed the online edition to the public domain, I'll hopefully be able to publish a free Kindle edition through one of the Internet libraries.
Download or read book The Illusion of Will Self and Time written by Jonathan Bricklin and published by State University of New York Press. This book was released on 2015-06-01 with total page 405 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Seminary Co-op Notable Book of 2016 William James is often considered a scientist compromised by his advocacy of mysticism and parapsychology. Jonathan Bricklin argues James can also be viewed as a mystic compromised by his commitment to common sense. James wanted to believe in will, self, and time, but his deepest insights suggested otherwise. "Is consciousness already there waiting to be uncovered and is it a veridical revelation of reality?" James asked shortly before his death in 1910. A century after his death, research from neuroscience, physics, psychology, and parapsychology is making the case, both theoretically and experimentally, that answers James's question in the affirmative. By separating what James passionately wanted to believe, based on common sense, from what his insights and researches led him to believe, Bricklin shows how James himself laid the groundwork for this more challenging view of existence. The non-reality of will, self, and time is consistent with James's psychology of volition, his epistemology of self, and his belief that Newtonian, objective, even-flowing time does not exist.
Download or read book The Illusion of Free Will written by Daniel Zaborowski and published by Daniel Zaborowski. This book was released on with total page 62 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The Illusion of Free Will: Philosophical and Scientific Considerations" is a comprehensive exploration of the concept of free will from both philosophical and scientific perspectives. The book is organized into 8 parts, each with at least 4 subsections, covering topics such as the historical debate on free will, the role of neuroscience and genetics in shaping behavior, the illusion of conscious will, the evolutionary origins of free will, moral responsibility, personal identity, consciousness, and the practical implications of the illusion of free will for society. The book challenges the commonly held belief that individuals possess free will and the ability to make conscious decisions. Instead, it argues that our sense of control over our decisions is an illusion, shaped by cognitive biases and environmental factors. The authors explore different theories on determinism and indeterminism, as well as compatibilism and incompatibilism, to provide a comprehensive understanding of the concept of free will. In addition to its philosophical inquiry, the book also examines the scientific basis of free will, including the role of genetics, neuroscience, and environmental factors in shaping behavior. It also explores the implications of the illusion of free will for personal identity and moral responsibility. Overall, "The Illusion of Free Will" is a thought-provoking and informative book that challenges our assumptions about the nature of free will and its impact on human behavior and society.
Download or read book Free Will Explained written by Dan Barker and published by Union Square & Company. This book was released on 2018 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Do we have free will? And if we don't, why do we think we do? Scientists and philosophers have been battling with this issue for years. In this book, a former Christian minister who is now an internationally recognized authority on atheism addresses these questions."--Page 2 of cover.
Download or read book The Illusion of Determinism written by Edwin A. Locke and published by Bookbaby. This book was released on 2018-03-08 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book shows that the theory of determinism, the doctrine that everything we believe, feel or do is determined by forces outside our control, is false (and actually self contradictory). The book shows that free will is self caused and involves the choice to use our rational faculty or not. Experiments that claim to prove determinism are refuted. The libertarian view that free will is based on randomness is also show to be fallacious. A distinction is made between what free will entails and what its limits are. The book shows that determinists' scorn for people who believe in free will (calling this view folk psychology based on ignorance) is misguided. It is determinists who are victims of a false view of human nature.
Download or read book Breaking the Free Will Illusion for the Betterment of Humankind written by 'Trick Slattery and published by . This book was released on 2014-07-29 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Learn why the belief in free will doesn't make sense, and why you and the rest of humankind will be better off abandoning it! Free will is an ability many think they posses. Most, however, aren't aware of the dangers imposed by such a belief, and have never thought about free will other than their own assumptions based on a pervasive feeling. The logic, reason, and evidence, however, says something entirely different. Have you ever blamed yourself for something you've done in the past? If so, for how long? Perhaps you still are? Have you ever held a grudge over another person or them you? Perhaps you have hatred for someone who has opposing ideas, thoughts, and beliefs. Or maybe you think someone is more deserving than another or to blame for their own situation? The belief in free will embeds itself within so much of what we think, feel, and do. It isn't just about abstract philosophical metaphysics that applies only to those in academic circles. The belief in free will is a root feeling and concept that has an effect on how most people think about politics, religion, economics, morality / ethics, law, criminal and justice systems, feelings about ourselves, our relationship to others, and our relationship to the world around us. It's for this reason that the topic needs to move away from academia and into the real world. Individually, the free will topic means a lot to you and everything you think, say, and do. Overall, the topic means a great deal for the entirety of humanity. There are real world consequences to holding such a belief in free will, and those consequences are more dire than one would suspect. Free will is often taken for granted and assumed as something positive. The reality, however, is something surprisingly different and, at least initially, counter-intuitive. In actuality, the belief in free will creates people who have resentment, guilt, and hatred. It drives inequality, egoism, poverty dismissal, retributive tendencies, non-connectedness, and a slew of other unhelpful and downright dangerous thoughts and feelings. If we continue holding on to such illusions as if they are real, the future looks bleak. Rather than try to understand causes and fix things at base, we'll just assume that people could have done other than they did. It is, after all, much easier to place blame on people than it is to look for actual causes. It's a much simpler task to suggest that you or the another person simply could have or should have done differently. If, however, we begin to break away from the illusion -- If we begin to understand that free will is not a rational belief -- only then can humanity progress to a state of less ego, more understanding, and start to develop solutions based on reality rather than fictions. We can either keep holding on to the ultimately harmful free will illusion, or break the illusion in the most educated and safe ways possible. And the only way to break the illusion is with well reasoned information. In this enlightening book, 'Trick Slattery gives the ultimate case against free will, and also explores why it's important that we begin to recognize this fact and understand what it means. He makes the case that it's not only an illusion, but a harmful illusion at that. The only way to begin mending the harms this illusion has caused is to understand why it simply can't exist, and what it does and doesn't mean that it doesn't exist. Free will is an illusion. We experience a feeling of free will, but that feeling doesn't correlate with something real. It's only a feeling. Come be a part of the history that breaks the free will illusion for the betterment of humankind!
Download or read book Exploring the Illusion of Free Will Second Edition written by George Ortega and published by CreateSpace. This book was released on 2013-06-24 with total page 150 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Note: For the paperback edition the author has omitted chapter 2. While free will is the most discussed topic in philosophy, few books unequivocally refuting the notion have been published. Dan Wegner's 2002 The Illusion of Conscious Will a pioneering, powerfully documented exception, psychology has essentially ignored the matter. That refuting the notion is profoundly important is not asserted solely by author George Ortega. American philosopher John Searle, (who in 2010 was listed the 13th most cited post-1900 philosopher in the world) strongly concurs. According to Searle, for free will to be acknowledged an illusion would be "a bigger revolution in our thinking than Einstein, or Copernicus, or Newton, or Galileo, or Darwin - it would alter our whole conception of our relation with the universe." Since 1997 when Ortega authored a physics paper on why the causality that refutes free will is a fundamental law of nature, he has worked to move the revelation that free will is illusory from academia to the public arena. His first success came in 2007 when he discovered an interested audience among the Internet's leading voice-chat website, Paltalk. Under the username Blisser, Ortega repeatedly brought up and refuted free will in atheist rooms and in his own room completely dedicated to the topic. It was not, however, until early 2010 that Ortega succeeded in creating a major public buzz about free will being an illusion. On April 7th, he founded the Manhattan, NYC Meetup group "The Predetermined Will Society - Busting the Free Will Myth." The visionary message of this world's first discussion group devoted to publicizing the refutation of free will reached innumerable Meetup members, (from among the 22 million New York Metropolitan Area population) who encountered the group's listing millions of times at the Meetup site.On January 6, 2011, Ortega premiered the first-ever cable TV series devoted to the topic, a weekly show called Exploring the Illusion of Free Will that continues to cablecast new material to Westchester County, New York, and to Manhattan, NYC. The promotions worked. With its April 16-22, 2011 article, "Free will; The illusion we can't live without," New Scientist became the first magazine in history to refute free will in a cover story. On March 6, 2012, best-selling New York Times author Sam Harris published his refutation book Free Will, and as its May/June, 2012 cover story, Scientific American Mind ran the piece "Who's in Control - How Physics and Neuroscience Dictate Your 'Free' Will." Ortega's unique passion for, and leadership in publicizing, the truth about human will comes across throughout the book's devastating, yet accessible, explanations of why free will is impossible, and in its descriptions of the harm free will-belief causes us personally and societally. What also sets Ortega's work apart from refutations by others is his strong recognition that humanity's overcoming the belief in free will is an historic evolutionary leap in human consciousness. Comprising edited transcripts of the first episodes of his revolutionary TV series, another of his book's defining characteristics is the reiteration of free will refutations and of other salient material. Readers who lean toward free will belief are advised to not discount the utility, in fact the necessity, of such review. The emotional barriers to accepting that free will is impossible are powerful, and will not readily yield to an unrecapitulated presentation of the evidence. Ortega recognizes that unparalleled history has already been made as the age-old belief in free will has fallen to science, logic, and experience. In the epilogue, he includes a virtually complete list of free will-refuting articles in major publications over the last decade, and a list of 24 books devoted to refuting free will. Ortega, who is second cousin to composer Burt Bacharach, continues to reside in his Westchester County, NY hometown of White Plains.
Download or read book Free Will Causality and Neuroscience written by and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2019-10-21 with total page 191 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Neuroscientists often consider free will to be an illusion. Contrary to this hypothesis, the contributions to this volume show that recent developments in neuroscience can also support the existence of free will. Firstly, the possibility of intentional consciousness is studied. Secondly, Libet’s experiments are discussed from this new perspective. Thirdly, the relationship between free will, causality and language is analyzed. This approach suggests that language grants the human brain a possibility to articulate a meaningful personal life. Therefore, human beings can escape strict biological determinism. Contributing author Sofia Bonicalzi has received funding from the European Union’s Framework Programme for Research and Innovation Horizon 2020 (2014-2020) under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Grant Agreement No. 754388 (LMUResearchFellows) and from LMUexcellent, funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) and the Free State of Bavaria under the Excellence Strategy of the German Federal Government and the Länder.
