Excuses, excuses
The Doc wonders if free will is extinct. Not yet but we are working to kill it. It’s a handy presumption that there’s no free will. Then it’s easy to regulate things since, poor you, you just can’t help yourself.
And if there’s no free will, then nothing is your fault. And that makes you feel better and sort of justifies things for you. It’s not free will that makes you an alcoholic or sex addict or drug addict or just plain irritable. It’s just wired into you. How convenient.
Here in the real world, you do have the freedom to choose. And in the real world, your behavior is not a disease or condition. It’s what you do and you can choose to do it or not.
From the article, though, it seems as though the research is interpreting conditioning (social or otherwise) as a lack of free will. And that is rubbish.
July 6th, 2010 at 10:41 am
If we follow this path I can do anything and that is just fine;then why have any laws at all? If everything we do is by instinct then laws will only hinder us. Something like that would make criminals everywhere happy.
July 6th, 2010 at 12:21 pm
Amen. Irish genes may have made my body metabolize alcohol badly. But free will kept pouring it in. Then free will stopped pouring it in (25 yrs ago!). What a system!
July 6th, 2010 at 1:44 pm
This assumes that “free will” equals doing as one pleases. It doesn’t. But I forget: “A is A!”
July 6th, 2010 at 1:47 pm
You presume incorrectly.
July 6th, 2010 at 1:57 pm
*sighs* Once again a complex philosophical issue gets reduced to a simplistic partisan debate.
July 6th, 2010 at 2:06 pm
Yeah, the only thing wired into you is which particular things will get your endorphins going. Whether you choose to be a slave to that rush, or exercise some willpower, is up to you entirely.
July 7th, 2010 at 10:38 am
(sob,sniff)Dr. Helen made my head hurt.
July 7th, 2010 at 11:05 pm
The denial of the existence of free will is simply a revealing of moral weakness or absence.