Friday, June 15, 2012

On libertarianism (not the political one)

The Maverick Philosopher (William Vallicella) has some interesting posts on free will. Start here where he states categorically that he believes in libertarian free will. I strongly agree with this as I don't see how one can deny libertarian free will without falling into self-defeat. He links to another post here where he takes down a pseudo-philosopher who tries to argue against free will, which in turn leads to a companion post on neuroscience and free will here. That then links to an excellent article by Alfred R. Mele, "Free Will: Action Theory Meets Neuroscience". Returning then to his original post, Vallicella links to yet another post where he points out that it's incoherent to say that free will, moral responsibility, and consciousness are illusions. (On the latter, if consciousness is an illusion, who is having the illusion? An illusion is an illusion to a consciousness) And finally he also links in the original post to another take-down of the pseudo-philosopher here.

And just in case that's not enough for you, read Ted Chiang's brilliant short (one page) story "What's Expected of Us".

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