'Trick Slattery's Blog, page 6

No Free Will Mind Training (NFWMT): Introduction

So you have concluded that there is no free will (in the sense defined here), but you still seem to behave the same as you did when you believed in such free will. In fact, you find yourself reverting to behaviors that don’t make a whole lot of sense when viewed from the understanding ’bout the lack of free will.

First, understand that it happens to even the strongest free will skeptic. Unless you were raised in a household of free will skeptics who live in a bubble and re-enforced the unders...

Quarantine Analogy and Free Will Skepticism

If a dangerous contagious disease that we don’t yet have a cure for starts to find its way into the population, we have to quarantine people who have it. But why do we do this? The answer is simple, it prevents theability for the disease to spread. But what if a person with the contagious disease doesn’t want to be quarantined? Would quarantining them be something we shouldn’t then do? Should we just let them spread the disease they have as much as they want? Of course not.

So we are blaming...

Free Will Intuitions: Fred and Barney Case Study – InfoGraphic

Some compatibilists find it hard to believe that a large majority of the world actually does intuitively believe in the incoherent definition of free will. They think it’s fine and dandy to redefine the word as if the other definition is of no concern what-so-ever. Others realize that people do actually have these intuitions but look to evade such by redefining free will. Such evasion is, however, very problematic. Understanding that we could not have, of our own accord, done otherwise, is...

Leprechauns vs. Free Will (Comparing Beliefs)

There is no evidence for free will (as defined here), just as there is no evidence for leprechauns. Indeed, there is just as much burden of proof required for the claim that such free will exists as there is for the claim that leprechauns exist. We could technically just default to this burden and say that the onus is on the free will believer to prove the existence of free will, just as the onus would be on the person who claims leprechauns, fairies, orunicorns exists, Elvis faked his death,...

Brain Tumors, Microchips, and Free Will… Oh My

Some compatibilists think that so long as we can make decisionsto “do what we want” that such decisions are sufficient to label as “free will”. They don’t, however, understand the implications of such thinking. Take a look at this excerpt from my book Breaking the Free Will Illusion for the Betterment of Humankind:

Some compatibilists have a different idea of what’s meant by the word “freedom.” They may say that if a person’s thoughts dictate the event (are the antecedent causes of the event)...

“Free Will vs. Determinism” – Do We Need a Better Label?

The free will debate is almost always classified/labeled as a debate between “free will vs. determinism”. This confuses many into thinking that if determinism is incompatible with free will (which it is), people just need to show that determinism isn’t necessarily the case and automatically the possibility for free will opens up. In other words, when someone argues against free will, so many people will revert to the idea that perhaps the universe isn’t deterministic, the negation of such bec...

Redefining “Free Will” is Like Redefining “Geocentric” – Except Worse

Some compatibilists think we should redefine the term “free will” to be something that is consistent with reality, rather than accept a more common definition that is incoherent or outside ofthe facts.Today I want to address this little snippet from Daniel Dennett’s response to Sam Harris. Dennett is a compatibilist who wants to redefine free will, Harris is an incompatibilist who does not. In one part Dennett says:

After all, most people used to believe the sun went around the earth. They w...

We Don’t Have to Act Like Free Will Exists

I’ve heard time and time again from people who claim that “even if there is no free will, we still need to act like it exists”. This is a way to bypass the mounds of behavioral adjustments and changes in beliefs that truly do need to take place with the understanding that free will doesn’t exist.

Things just aren’t as simple as asserting we need to act like it exists. There is a whole lot of nuance to the understanding that we don’t have free will. To behave like it exists is to behave in a w...

Ontic Probability Doesn’t Exist: Assessing “Probability” for the Free Will Debate

This topic is going to be a bit more on the “for people familiar with knowledge of some philosophical jargon” level. In other words, this won’t be a typical post that I normally make for larger mass consumption. Perhaps at a later day I’ll create a whittled down version, but this one is needed to point others to who claim ontic probability and use such as a way to contrive free will.

I’ll be using words such as “ontic / ontological” and “epistemic / epistemological”, I’ll be talking a little...

10 Reasons Why People Can’t Let Go of Their Free Will Belief

This week I’d like to focus on 10 reasons why people find it difficultto let go of their belief in free will (as defined here), even when given the evidence against it. There are many factors involved, so as always, this is just a brief list fromthe many possibilities. Some may apply to some people, others may apply to other people, but there is usually a good mix of these that make it hard for people to give up their free will belief.

So what’s one to do about this?It depends, but persistenc...