DOWNLOADS: PDF of EXPLORING THE ILLUSION OF FREE WILL, SECOND EDITION
and
PDF of
FREE WILL -
MOVING BEYOND THE ILLUSION: SCREENPLAY FOR A DOCUMENTARY
BY
George Ortega
"The debate about free
will, long the purview
of philosophers alone,
has been given new life
by scientists,
especially
neuroscientists studying
how the brain works. And
what they're finding
supports the idea that
free will is a complete
illusion."
"In an intriguing review
in the July 2 edition of
the journal Science,
published online
Thursday, Ruud Custers
and Henk Aarts of
Utrecht University in
the Netherlands lay out
the mounting evidence of
the power of what they
term the 'unconscious
will.'...John Bargh of
Yale University, who 10
years ago predicted many
of the findings
discussed by Custers and
Aarts in a paper
entitled "The Unbearable
Automaticity of Being,"
called the Science
paper a "landmark —
nothing like this has
been in Science
before."
"Some
people think that
quantum mechanics shows
that determinism is
false, and so holds out
a hope that we can be
ultimately responsible
for what we do. But even
if quantum mechanics had
shown that determinism
is false (it hasn’t),
the question would
remain: how can
indeterminism, objective
randomness, help in any
way whatever to make you
responsible for your
actions? The answer to
this question is easy.
It can’t."
"In modern science, it is
difficult to find the
gap into which to slip
free will—the uncaused
causer—because there
seems to be no part of
the machinery that does
not follow in a causal
relationship from the
other parts."
"The philosophical
definition of free will
uses the phrase 'could
have done otherwise'... "As a neuroscientist,
you've got to be a
determinist. There are
physical laws, which the
electrical and chemical
events in the brain
obey. Under identical
circumstances, you
couldn't have done
otherwise; there's no
'I' which can say 'I
want to do otherwise'."
"The
discovery that humans
possess a determined
will has profound
implications for moral
responsibility. Indeed,
Harris is even critical
of the idea that free
will is "intuitive": he
says careful
introspection can cast
doubt on free will. In
an earlier book on
morality, Harris argues
'Thoughts simply arise
in the brain. What else
could they do? The truth
about us is even
stranger than we may
suppose: The illusion of
free will is itself an
illusion'"
If you think carefully
about any decision you
have made in the past,
you will recognize that
all of them were
ultimately based on
similar—genetic or
social—inputs to which
you had been exposed.
And you will also
discover that you had no
control over these
inputs, which means that
you had no free will in
taking the decisions you
did.
Cause and Effect
– At about the 5th century BC,
in his work On the Mind,
the Greek Philosopher Leucippus
penned the earliest known
universal statement describing
what we today understand as
determinism, or the law of cause
and effect
“Nothing happens at random,
but everything for a reason and
by necessity.”
Human Will –
The concepts of will and free
will are actually Christian in
orgin. It was Saint Paul in his
Letter to the Romans, which is
dated at about 58 A.D., who
first discovered this thing we
call human will. He came to it
by recognizing that he could not
often do as much right as he
wanted. Saint Paul wrote in
Romans 7:15 that:
“I don’t understand myself at
all, for I really want to do
what is right, but I can’t.” I
do what I don’t want to – what I
hate.” (Translation – The Living
Bible)
Free Will --
Nothing new was said on the
matter for the next few hundred
years until St. Augustine
grappled with the concepts of
evil and justice. Saint
Augustine wrote in his book
De Libero Arbitrio, 386-395
A.D., (translated as “On Free
Will”)
“Evil deeds are punished by
the justice of God. They would
not be punished justly if they
had not been performed
voluntarily.”
The problem he saw was that
if human beings do not have a
free will, it would be unfair
for God to arbitrarily reward or
punish us. St. Augustine
concluded that God could not be
unfair, and so he created the
concept of a human free will,
whereby we earn our reward or
punishment by what we freely do.
Scientific concepts
relating to the determined will
vs. free will question
Classical Mechanics
-- In 1687 Sir Isaac Newton
publishes his “Laws of Motions”
that mathematically describes
the physical universe as acting
in a mechanistic manner
according to the principle of
cause and effect.
Classical Mechanics is a
completely deterministic theory
Heisenberg
Uncertainty Principle
-- In 1925 Warner Heisenberg
describes mathematically that…
We can measure the position
of a particle or the momentum of
a particle (momentum meaning its
direction and velocity), but we
cannot simultaneously measure
the position and momentum of a
particle.
Copenhagen
Interpretation of Quantum
Mechanics -- Niels Bohr
and others make the following
assertions;
1) Particles do not have a
simultaneous position and
momentum.
2) Elementary particles
behave indeterministically, and
are not subject to the principle
of cause and effect.
Believers in free will saw
the Heisenberg Uncertainty
Principle and Copenhagen
Interpretation of Quantum
Mechanics as providing a
possibility for free will to
exist. They asserted that if
elementary particles behave
indeterministically, they are
not subject to the principle of
cause and effect that prohibits
free will.
But, as noted above, it
eventually became apparent that
indeterminism also prohibits
free will.
Exploring the Illusion of Free Will,
2nd Edition Chapters
In this first episode of
Exploring the Illusion of Free
Will, taped on November 27,
2010, I describe how I came to
understand that our human will
is causal and unconscious rather
than free.
2. Proving Causal Will in Real
Time
In this second episode of
Exploring the Illusion of Free
Will, taped on November 27,
2010, I use real-time examples
to explain why human beings have
a causal will rather than a free
will.
3. Morality Within a Causal Will
Perspective
In this episode of Exploring
the Illusion of Free Will, I
describe how our lack of free
will makes personal moral
accountability impossible, but
this fact does not threaten our
personal and societal
requirements for order and rule
of law.
4. What it All Means
In this episode of Exploring
the Illusion of Free Will, I
explain how our world's
overcoming the illusion of free
will would represent a major
evolutionary leap in human
consciousness, and describe how
this change would play out
personally and societally.
5. We Do Not "Experience" Free
Will
this episode of Exploring
the Illusion of Free Will, taped
March 2, 2011, I explain how
most people's strongest defense
for free will, the idea that
they "experience" their will as
free, is mistaken in that what
we all actually experience is
our will. We thereafter infer as
to whether it is free or causal.
6. How the Hedonic Imperative
Makes Free Will Impossible
In this episode of Exploring
the Illusion of Free Will, taped
March 2, 2001, I describe how
the principle in biology and
psychology that we always seek
pleasure and avoid pain compels
our every decision.
7. How the Unsolicited
Participation of the Unconscious
Makes Free Will Impossible
In this episode of Exploring
the Illusion of Free Will, taped
on March 2, 2011, I explain how
our unconscious, which never
sleeps, always participates in
our decisions, rendering free
will impossible.
8. Asking When a Child Gains it
Illuminates the Incoherence of
the Concept "Free Will"
In this episode of Exploring
the Illusion of Free Will, taped
March 2, 2011, I begin with the
premise that infants do not have
a free will. If we ask when,
exactly, an infant presumably
acquires one, we can understand
why the concept "free will" does
not make sense, and is
ultimately an illusion.
9. Overcoming Our Reluctance to
Overcome the Illusion of Free
Will
In this episode of Exploring
the Illusion of Free Will, taped
on March 4, 2011, I present
suggestions to help us overcome
the emotional and belief
barriers that stand in the way
of accepting the causal nature
of our human will.
10. Why Change as the Basic
Universal Process Makes Free
Will Impossible
In this episode of Exploring
the Illusion of Free Will, taped
on March 2, 2011, I describe
change as the basic process in
our universe, and explain how
because this process requires
causality, free will is
therefore impossible.