Tag Archives: Determinism

Jerry Coyne: “Why you don’t really have free will” – USATODAY.com

Jerry Coyne, who knows a lot about biology, doesn’t know nearly enough about other things on which he claims to be an authority. If what had written were only on his blog I would ignore it, but USAToday published it online: “Why you don’t really have free will.” It includes, Now there’s no way to …

January 2, 2012 – 10:04 am | By Tom Gilson | Posted in New Atheism, Origins and Science | Tagged , , , , , , | Comments (169)

Pro-Choice Determinists

I was just wondering how many determinists—people who believe that human free will is an illusion, because everything is determined by physical law—would describe themselves as “pro-choice.”

September 26, 2011 – 10:13 am | By Tom Gilson | Posted in Life and Choices | Tagged , , | Comments (123)

“On naturalism, or: Good and bad extrapolations in science | Uncommon Descent”

Just a small problem here: In his opening article, Eric McDonald highlights a critical flaw in Coyne’s scientific case against free will: scientists haven’t put forward any arguments in defence of determinism [From A very revealing post on naturalism, or: Good and bad extrapolations in science | Uncommon Descent] Oops.

July 12, 2011 – 4:07 pm | By Tom Gilson | Posted in Origins and Science | Tagged , | Comments (416)

Free Will: Where’s the Real Illusion?

It never ceases to amaze me how some people will blithely burst forth with incoherent convictions of determinism. I acknowledge that Anthony R. Cashmore is an accomplished biologist holding an endowed chair at Penn. But that doesn’t mean he makes sense speaking of free will. The following comes from his January 2010 paper, The Lucretian …

June 26, 2010 – 4:48 pm | By Tom Gilson | Posted in Origins and Science | Tagged , , | Comments (50)

Bering in Mind: Scientists say free will probably doesn’t exist, but urge: “Don’t stop believing!”

From a Scientific American piece on free will: Perhaps you missed it on your first reading too, but the authors are making an extraordinary suggestion. They seem to be claiming that the public “can’t handle the truth,” and that we should somehow be protecting them (lying to them?) about the true causes of human social …

April 8, 2010 – 10:15 am | By Tom Gilson | Posted in Origins and Science | Tagged , | Comments (19)

But Corrective Punishment Makes Perfect Sense, Right?

I was listening to Reasonable Doubts on the way to work this morning. Reasonable Doubts is a strictly atheistic blog with an associated weekly podcast it, and this episode was to have Tom Clark, of the Center for Naturalism, as a special guest. Tom and I have our strong disagreements, yet I would regard him …

July 13, 2009 – 11:52 am | By Tom Gilson | Posted in Ethics, Origins and Science | Tagged , | Comments (107)

Ideas Have Consequences: Free Will vs. The Programmed Brain

Ideas have consequences! One such was recently shown through an experiment described in Scientific American. [R]esearchers found that the amount a participant cheated correlated with the extent to which they rejected [the philosophical notion of] free will…. The correlation was positive: those who rejected free will tended to cheat more. The 22-page original research paper, …

August 19, 2008 – 10:42 am | By Tom Gilson | Posted in Ethics | Tagged , , | Comments (102)

“Unconscious decisions in the brain”

A new study just reported from Germany concludes that “Already several seconds before we consciously make a decision its outcome can be predicted from unconscious activity in the brain…. The decision could not be predicted perfectly, but prediction was clearly above chance. This suggests that the decision is unconsciously prepared ahead of time but the …

April 14, 2008 – 1:26 pm | By Tom Gilson | Posted in Origins and Science | Tagged , , | Comments (64)