Dennett’s Compatabilism Is Just Dumb

I just finished reading Daniel C Dennett’s latest book “Intuition Pumps And Other Tools For Thinking” and, while it’s overall an engaging book, his final section is just plain disappointing. In the final chapters, Dennett attempts to demonstrate some of his “intuition pumps” (tools for improving our thinking about difficult problems) by tackling three very hard […]

Stephen Hawking on Free Will

I’m currently reading Stephen Hawking’s most recent book (co-authored with Leonard Mlodinow) “The Grand Design” and was pleased to find the following paragraphs about free will. “Do people have free will? If we have free will, where in the evolutionary tree did it develop? Do blue-green algae or bacteria have free will, or is their […]

A new Sam Harris article on living without free will.

Sam Harris has posted a new article today called “Life Without Free Will“. He starts off: One of the most common objections to my position on free will is that accepting it could have terrible consequences, psychologically or socially. This is a strange rejoinder, analogous to what many religious people allege against atheism: Without a […]

Doubting Free Will: The Argument from Celebrity-Authority

Here’s a great list of quotes about free will via Bill Schloendorn. While they are all great, this one is my favourite: Charles Darwin: “…one doubts existence of free will [because] every action determined by heredity, constitution, example of others or teaching of others.” “This view should teach one profound humility, one deserves no credit […]