Flickers of Freedom

Nahmias Interview with 3:AM

Our own Eddy Nahmias has an illuminating  interview with 3:AM's Richard Marshall--who has been doing a number of really nice interviews as of late with a wide variety of philosophers.  So, when you're done reading the interview with Eddy, you should check out some of Marshall's other interviews for 3:AM as well!

After the Free Will Renaissance

Some folks who weren't going to be attending the Pacific APA asked me to post my SPA Meeting remarks on the future of the free will debate (thanks Andrei and Luca for organizing that session!). For those interested, here were the core of those remarks: 

1. The past 40 years of work on free will work has been dominated by philosophers working out the consequences of a problematic given to us by the Great Trinity
2. We’re approaching Event Horizon for that work, i.e., the point where that work will have significantly less visible influence on subsequent generations. 
3. What comes next is hard to see, and indeed, it is entertaining but Ultimately Fruitless to speculate about what comes next.  
4. However, since reality is no constraint on The Provocative, I’ve made some prognostications that are at least as plausible as any random selection of theses 

For the details, read on.

Libertarianism may be crazy, but at least it isn't as bad as everything else

After you get done answering Al's query about philosophy of action, can you tell me where people say something like the title to this post? That is, can you think of passages where libertarians adopt something like a "last person standing" attitude about their account, i.e., sure libertarianism may be startling, but it is the least bad option left when you take a hard look at alternatives? 

On some level, I suspect incompatibilists of all stripes and a few compatibilists think their own views may be crazy, but that their preferred view is less bad than any of the alternatives. However, I'm looking for passages where libertarians suggest something like this view in a fairly explicit way. 

(John Doris asked me this question, and I couldn't answer, so I'm passing it on to you all.) 

 

CHE: Is Free Will an Illusion?

The Chronicle Review has published an interesting collection of essays on the relationship between recent developments in social psychology and neuroscience and free will.  Authors include Jerry Coyne, Al Mele, Michael Gazzaniga, Hilary Bok, Owen Jones, and Paul Bloom.  

Here is the introduction:

Free will has long been a fraught concept among philosophers and theologians. Now neuroscience is entering the fray.

For centuries, the idea that we are the authors of our own actions, beliefs, and desires has remained central to our sense of self. We choose whom to love, what thoughts to think, which impulses to resist. Or do we?

Neuroscience suggests something else. We are biochemical puppets, swayed by forces beyond our conscious control. So says Sam Harris, author of the new book, Free Will (Simon & Schuster), a broadside against the notion that we are in control of our own thoughts and actions. Harris's polemic arrives on the heels of Michael S. Gazzaniga's Who's In Charge? Free Will and the Science of the Brain (HarperCollins), and David Eagleman's Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain (Pantheon), both provocative forays into a debate that has in recent months spilled out onto op-ed and magazine pages, and countless blogs.

What's at stake? Just about everything: morality, law, religion, our understanding of accountability and personal accomplishment, even what it means to be human. Harris predicts that a declaration by the scientific community that free will is an illusion would set off "a culture war far more belligerent than the one that has been waged on the subject of evolution."

The Chronicle Review brought together some key thinkers to discuss what science can and cannot tell us about free will, and where our conclusions might take us.

Happy reading!

3:AM Interview with Mele

Yet another interesting and illuminating interview by 3:AM's Richard Marshall.  This time, Al Meletalks about free will, self-deception, neuroscience, experimental philosophy and a number of other themes.  Check it out!

Crowd-sourcing my SPA Remarks

At the annual International Free Will Conference (you know, the Pacific APA), the Society for the Philosophy of Agency is having its inaugural meeting. There’s going to be a panel discussion on the State of the Field, and I’m tasked with talking about free will. Among the things I’m supposed to be ready to talk about are the current central issues in debates about free will, interesting developments, and emerging topics over the next 5+ years.

For the talk, I thought about consulting my intuitions on the matters. However, I’ve been told that my intuitions are generally defective. So, I thought I should do some Serious Experimental work and just ask you, dear blog reader, what you think about these matters. I can’t promise that I will use your remarks in my talk, but I can’t promise that I won’t. I can promise that I won't run a regression analysis on the frequency of various remarks.

So I bleg of you: what do you think is Big Time in free will, what’s new and exciting to you, and what do you think will be Big Time in 5+ years? 

Why a Pseudonym?

Does anyone know why Dickinson S. Miller published his famous free-will paper under the name R. E. Hobart?

The Encyclopedia of Philosophy lists one other paper published under the pseudonym and several published by Miller under his own name.

Perplexed? Maybe you need a new guide!

The second edition of the Oxford Handbook of Free Will is out. Thanks to Bob Kane for putting it together.

X-Phi bleg

I'm wondering if there is any evidence for what percentage of the folk believe that we're free (and/or morally responsible) at least some of the time. I think I remember (remembing is factive, right?) that there's been some recent x-phi work on this issue. Even if I am correct in what I think I remember, I can't remember who's been doing work on this kind of issue and I quick search didn't turn anything up. So here I am asking the rest of you--has there been any work on or around this issue? Thanks.

 

Free Will Debate on Youtube

 Thanks to Bob Doyle for bringing the following series of videos to my attention.  Each one is from a worskshop in Barcelona this past October that was entitled "Is Science Compatible with Our Desire for Freedom?"