The physical universe was a language with a perfectly ambiguous grammar. Every physical event was an utterance that could be parsed in two entirely different ways, one casual and the other teleologica...
Freedom isn't an illusion; it's perfectly real in the context of sequential consciousness. Within the context of simultaneous consciousness, freedom is not meaningful, but neither is coercion; it's si...
(n.) The doctrine that the will is not free, but is inevitably and invincibly determined by motives.
I think my dad was so fascinated by this idea because he realizedon some fundamental level that he was not in control of his desires:I think he woke up every morning in his nice house with hardwoodflo...
Our flesh shrinks from what it dreads and responds to the stimulus of what it desires by a purely reflex action of the nervous system. Our eyelid closes before we are aware that the fly is about to en...
...any object functioning within the physical laws of any particular universe does not have free will ... In terms of human beings, all behavior and cognition cannot appear out of thin air. Behavior a...
Man’s life is a line that nature commands him to describe upon the surface of the earth, without his ever being able to swerve from it, even for an instant. He is born without his own consent; his org...
There’s no such thing as probability," she says, slowly, with minimal movement of her jaw. "Things turn out the way they do.
Genes do not make an individual homosexual. They play their part, but so does the rest of the universe.
I know that certain minds would regard as audacious the idea of relating the laws which preside over the play of our organs to those laws which govern inanimate bodies; but, although novel, this truth...
Few indeed are those who get a choice. We do as we are told. We stand or fall beside those who were born near to us, who look as we do, who speak the same words, and all the while we know as little of...
Individual free choices” can only be the expression of an “individual free will”.The notion of an “individual free will” generating “individual free choices” creates a much needed consequence: persona...
Events fall into a pattern that we can only discern retrospectively. We credit ourselves with far more agency than we actually possess. Things happen because they happen.
Evolutionary biology is imperialistic, overtaking entire fields of endeavor simply by attaching the prefix bio – or neuro -- to their names: bioethics, no comics, even, God help us, neurotheology. Its...
Not that chance dominated events in the early Solar System, for scientific determinism was also functioning. But chance is an essential factor in all evolutionary events, and the birth and development...
This is one of man's oldest riddles. How can the independence of human volition be harmonized with the fact that we are integral parts of a universe which is subject to the rigid order of nature's law...
Whether or not it is clear to you,no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.
A conscious being without free will is simply a metaphysical absurdity.
No, free will is not an 'extra'; it is part and parcel of the very essence of consciousness. A conscious being without free will is simply a metaphysical absurdity.
Sometimes evil didn't need an excuse. Sometimes evil just was.
I've been coerced into free will.
