'Trick Slattery's Blog, page 9
January 21, 2015
“Is Logical” is Not “Will Act Logically” – So What’s a Philosopher to Do?
In my book Breaking the Free Will Illusion for the Betterment of Humankind I make a logical case against free will (I prove a negative through proof of impossibility). I then go on to explain that if(the majority of) people understand this logical case, and ifthey understand what follows from such and act accordingly, the world will be a much “better” place than it currently is in many regards.
Saying something “is logical”, however, is not the same as saying someone actually “will act logical...
January 15, 2015
Burden of Proof for the Free Will Debate – INFOGRAPHIC
Some people confuse where the “Burden of Proof” actually is with the free will debate. TheBurden of Proof places the onus on the person making a claim to justify that claim with evidence. Some seem to think that because people experience a feeling of free will, that they don’t hold a Burden of Proof. This is not the case. The feeling of possessing free will is not evidence for the actual ability of free will. The only thing the feeling proves is that they have a feeling of free will. It does...
January 9, 2015
Daniel Dennett, Stop Telling People They Have Free Will!
Daniel Dennett, everyone’s favorite compatibilist, is at his wrong-headedantics once again. He just seems to love using an argument from adverse consequences fallacy to tell people they shouldn’t be giving others the truth about free will. Namely, that they don’t have it. And once again, he assumes such consequences based on studies that conflate deterministic mindsets with fatalistic mindsets. Once again, he assumes such based on people who aren’t really educated on the topic of free will. R...
January 5, 2015
Laplace’s Demon and Past Prediction Problems
Laplace’s demon is a thought experiment proposed in 1814 byFrench scholar Pierre-Simon Laplace. It was the first published articulation of determinism in conceptual form. It can be summarized by Laplace here:
We may regard the present state of the universe as the effect of its past and the cause of its future. An intellect which at a certain moment would know all forces that set nature in motion, and all positions of all items of which nature is composed, if this intellect were also vast enoug...
December 29, 2014
New Year’s Resolution: Believe in Fairies Rather than Free Will!
It’s holiday time, so why nottell people to believe in fictionsas their New Year’s resolution?
Another nonsensical article has cropped up titled “Need a New Year’s Resolution? Believe in Free Will!” written by science writer John Horgan for the Scientific American website. Of course this opinion piece is anything but scientific or unbiased.
In this article Horgantakes the compatibilist position of Daniel Dennett, basically defining free will as something compatible with reality, but avoiding th...
