|
Free Will Refuted in the News
An explosion of coverage since
2010
Last updated
July 30, 2012
The Charleston Gazette - "Charles
McElwee: Is free will an illusion?" July 28, 2012 by Charles McElwee
The Washington Post - "The
Philosophy of 'You didn't build
that'" by Dylan Matthews July
20, 2012"
"Some philosophers are what is
called “hard determinists,” who deny
that anything that could be called
free will exists....But if hard or
soft determinism is true, how can
people be responsible for their
actions, and thus deserve things
because of them? ...And if causal
determinism is true, your DNA and
brain chemistry are more or less
equivalent to that chip. In both
cases, something you have no control
over is manipulating your brain and
making you do things."
While Matthews is correct in his
analysis, what he misses is that
even if hard and soft determinism
were not true, the only remaining
alternative is that our actions are
the result of random, uncaused,
processes that even more strongly
refute the notion of free will.
Los Angeles Times - "Letters:
Free will and the brain" by
Laurent McReynolds July 20,
2012
Los Angeles Times - "Jerry
Sandusky -- a head case puzzle" by
Robert M. Sapolsky July 15,
2012
"It cannot be that our thoughts,
emotions, urges and itches are the
exclusive province of biology, while
what we do with them is entirely in
the biology-free province of good
and evil. If we are going to
incorporate biology into thinking
about human behavior — as logic
demands we do — then we have to
consider how it applies to all our
domains of behavior. There are no
separate categories."
The
New York Times' Sunday Book Review - "Have it Your Way; Free
Will by Sam Harris" by Daniel
Menaker July
13, 2012
"However correct
Harris’s position may be — and I
believe that his basic thesis must
indeed be correct — it seems to me a
sadder truth than he wants to."
Psychology Today
-
"Nietzsche on Self-Control" by
Joachim I. Krueger, Ph.D. July 1,
2012
"You can
administer rewards to shape behavior
because the person is a seat of
agency. If an organism responds
deterministically or
probabilistically to rewards, why
not use them? A hundred years of
research says that rewards (and
punishments) work without the
presumption of free will."
Psychology Today
-
"The
Curse of Free Will"
by Joachim I. Krueger, Ph.D
June 3, 2012
"Much of
self-regulation consists of the
suppression of impulses and
spontaneous behavior. This
suppression and bringing-in-line of
behavior with social norms usually
entails behavioral standardization,
homogenization, and thus a reduction
of variability. In short, I have
trouble seeing how self-regulation
and behavioral variability might be
used to score points for free will."
The Huffington Post - "Free Will
Is an Illusion" by Victor Stenger
June 1, 2012
"Obviously, we cannot have a
functioning society if we do not
protect ourselves from people who
are dangerous to others because of
whatever it is inside their brains
and nervous systems that makes them
dangerous. Still, given that we
don't have libertarian free will
that sets us above causal laws, it
would seem that our largely
retributive moral and justice
systems need to be re-evaluated, and
maybe even drastically revamped."The
Atlantic - "The Perfected Self" by David
H. Freedman June 2012
The
Guardian - "Guilty
but not responsible?" by
Rosiland English May 29,
2012
"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'"
"The assumption is that the act
is instinctive but Wayne Rooney
makes that spectacular overhead
goal sound as though it were the
result of a rational process."
Psychology
Today - "Don't
Blame Yourself (or Others)"
by John A. Johnson, Ph.D May
28, 2012
"My best might not be good enough to
make everything turn out perfectly,
but I cannot do better than my best.
This might sound like lack of free
will,
but I have never had any use for the
concept of free will anyway. I am
quite content to accept that each
person, including myself, is doing
the best that he or she can at any
moment, and could not have behaved
any differently at that moment."
SB
Nation - "Free Will,
Responsibility, and the Penalty Box"
by Megalodon on May 26, 2012
Psychology
Today -
"Your
Chaotic Mind"
by
Joachim I. Krueger, Ph.D
May 25, 2012
"Some psychotic behavior is
stereotyped, but some is variable,
not contingent on its surroundings,
and thus "crazy" in naive terms. The
internal, self-stimulating processes
of the psychotic mind are certainly
not free. If the mind were free, it
would stop itself from this kind of
self-stimulation and end the
suffering."The New
York Times Sunday Review - "The Amygdala
Made Me Do It" by James Atlas May 12,
2012
The Daily
Caller - "Do People Have Free Will" by By
Matt Cockeri April 9, 2012
Psychology Today -
"Free
Will Is an Illusion, So
What?" by
Raj Raghunathan, Ph.D.
May 8, 2012
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.
Los Angeles Times - "Book
reviews: 'Free Will,' 'Religion for
Atheists'" by Richard Rayner
April 08, 2012
"Harris, armed
with the newest research in
experimental psychology and neuro-imaging,
fires a brief and forceful broadside
at the conundrum that has nagged at
every major thinker from Plato to
Slavoj Zizek: Why is it that, though
we can do what we decide, we cannot
decide what to do? "Human choice,"
Harris writes, 'is as important as
fanciers of free will believe. But
the next choice you make will come
out of the darkness of prior causes
that you, the conscious witness of
your experience, did not bring into
being.'''
Waikato
Times (New Zealand) - "Free will is a
figment of our imaginations" by Joe Bennett
February 5, 2012
Psychology Today -
"The True Meaning Of Freedom" by
Alex
Lickerman, M.D. January 22, 2012
"But for the age-old question
of free will, it's even worse than
that: it looks as if the answer is
that we don't actually have it...It
appears that the unconscious mind,
functioning with an understanding
bereft of language, may control far
more of our conscious decision
making than we ever imagined—if not
all of it....Philosophers and
scientists are speaking out against
these results, not so much to deny
them but to try instead to salvage
the notion of free will by
redefining it."
USA Today
- "Why you don't really
have free will by Jerry
Coyne January 1, 2012
"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."
The Huffington Post - "The
Conspiracy Against Free Will" by
Paul Pardi August 3, 2011
"Many claim that we know we're free
and that's enough to keep acting as
if we are regardless of what the
science and philosophy says.
My view is that if we take the
evidence coming out of science and
philosophy seriously, freedom of the
will is hard to maintain."
The Atlantic -
"The Brain on Trial"
by David Eagleman
July/August 2011
"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."
Psychology Today - "How The Adjustment
Bureau Threatens Free WIll" by Dr. David Kyle Johnson,
Ph.D. March 8, 2011
Psychology Today - "A random walk
through the free will-derness" by Joachim
Krueger, Ph.D. December 5, 2010
The Telegraph -
"Neuroscience, free will
and determinism: 'I'm
just a machine'" by Tom
Chivers October 12, 2010"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 Telegraph
- "Neuroscience
and free will: when definitions
become important" by
Tom Chivers
October
12th, 2010
"The idea that we're not radically
free is hardly breaking news. Unless
you believe in an immaterial soul –
I recognise that many people do, but
bear with me – then you have to
believe that we are matter. And, if
we are matter, if we are made of
atoms like everything else, then
those atoms obey physical laws."
The Telegraph - "Neuroscience, free will
and determinism: 'I'm just a machine'" by Tom Chivers October 12, 2010
Psychology Today - "Beyond free will and
determinism: Take a chance with the Dice Man" by
Joachim I. Krueger, Ph.D. September 20, 2010
The
New York Times -
"Your Move: The Maze of
Free Will" by Galen
Strawson July 22, 2010
"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."
Time
Magazine - "Think
You're Operating on Free
Will? Think Again" by
Eben Harrell July 2,
2010
"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."
Psychology Today - "Is free will real?
Better believe it (even if it's not)." by David
Rock May 24, 2010
Scientific American
Blogs (web only)
- "Scientists
say free will probably doesn’t
exist, but urge: 'Don’t stop
believing!'" by Jesse Bering
April 14, 2010
(Dated incorrectly as April 6 –
see comments below
article
for correct date)
Manhattan Meetup -Exploring
the Illusion of Free Will
(originally
named
The
Predetermined Will Society –
Busting the Free Will Myth)
Founded on April 7, 2010 by
George Ortega.
Between 2003 and 2009, about
twelve articles were
published.
This Meetup lead to the
historic challenges to free
will by major publications
beginning in 2010.
Psychology Today - "The
Will is Caused, not "Free"
by
John A. Bargh, Ph.D June 23,
2009
"Determinism, if
it were true, would indeed rule out
this sort of free will, or shunt it
into the realm of total redundancy.
But indeterminism (of whatever
flavor) isn't any kinder to the
notion. Just because some event is
not strictly determined by prior
physical data doesn't mean it is
caused by a free will. It may be
simply indeterminately,
probabilistically, or (to whatever
degree) "randomly" caused by prior
physical data."
The Economist - "Incognito" April, 16th
2009
Science Magazine - "Case Closed for Free
Will?" by
Elsa
Youngsteadt
April 14, 2008
New Scientist - "Free will – is our
understanding wrong?" by Zeeya Merali August 01, 2007 (Preview Only)
New Scientist - "Free will and
evolution" by Matt Palmer February 03, 2007 (Preview Only)
The New York
Times -
"Free
Will: Now You Have It, Now You Don’t
By
Dennis Overbye January 2. 2007
"Mark Hallett, a
researcher with the National
Institute of Neurological Disorders
and Stroke, said, “Free will does
exist, but it’s a perception, not a
power or a driving force.
People experience free will. They
have the sense they are free.
“The more you scrutinize it, the
more you realize you don’t have it,”
he said. That is hardly a new
thought. The German philosopher
Arthur Schopenhauer said, as
Einstein paraphrased it, that 'a
human can very well do what he
wants, but cannot will what he
wants.'"
New Scientist - "The Big Questions: Do
we have free will?" by Patricia Churchland18 November 18, 2006
(Preview Only)
New Scientist - "Free will – you only
think you have it" by by Zeeya
Merali May 04, 2006 (Preview Only)
The Cornell Daily Sun - "Prof Denies
Human Free Will" by Julie Geng
August 30, 2005
Foreign Policy - "Undermining Free Will"
by Paul Davies September 1, 2004
Salon - "How free is free
will?" by Farhad Manjoo
May 21, 2004
New Scientist - "Sex, brains, robots and
Buddhism: looking for free will" by Chris Frith, Shere Hite, Owen
Holland, Geshe Tashi Tsering, Simon Blackburn Aaron Sloman and Christopher
Cordess May 10, 2003 (Preview Only)
Virtually no articles by
major media refuting free will
were published before 2003.
Top |
