Exploring the Illusion of Free Will and Moral Responsibility
Exploring the Illusion of Free Will and Moral Responsibility

Author: Gregg D. Caruso

Publisher: Lexington Books

Published: 2013-07-05

Total Pages: 335

ISBN-13: 073917732X

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Exploring the Illusion of Free Will and Moral Responsibility investigates the philosophical and scientific arguments for free will skepticism and their implications. Skepticism about free will and moral responsibility has been on the rise in recent years. In fact, a significant number of philosophers, psychologists, and neuroscientists now either doubt or outright deny the existence of free will and/or moral responsibility—and the list of prominent skeptics appears to grow by the day. Given the profound importance that the concepts of free will and moral responsibility hold in our lives—in understanding ourselves, society, and the law—it is important that we explore what is behind this new wave of skepticism. It is also important that we explore the potential consequences of skepticism for ourselves and society. Edited by Gregg D. Caruso, this collection of new essays brings together an internationally recognized line-up of contributors, most of whom hold skeptical positions of some sort, to display and explore the leading arguments for free will skepticism and to debate their implications.

Free Will and Consciousness
Free Will and Consciousness

Author: Gregg D. Caruso

Publisher: Lexington Books

Published: 2012

Total Pages: 313

ISBN-13: 0739171364

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In recent decades, with advances in the behavioral, cognitive, and neurosciences, the idea that patterns of human behavior may ultimately be due to factors beyond our conscious control has increasingly gained traction and renewed interest in the age-old problem of free will. In this book, Gregg D. Caruso examines both the traditional philosophical problems long associated with the question of free will, such as the relationship between determinism and free will, as well as recent experimental and theoretical work directly related to consciousness and human agency. He argues that our best scientific theories indeed have the consequence that factors beyond our control produce all of the actions we perform and that because of this we do not possess the kind of free will required for genuine or ultimate responsibility. It is further argued that the strong and pervasive belief in free will, which the author considers an illusion, can be accounted for through a careful analysis of our phenomenology and a proper theoretical understanding of consciousness. Indeed, the primary goal of this book is to argue that our subjective feeling of freedom, as reflected in the first-person phenomenology of agentive experience, is an illusion created by certain aspects of our consciousness.

Free Will
Free Will

Author: Sam Harris

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2012-03-06

Total Pages: 96

ISBN-13: 1451683405

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From the New York Times bestselling author of The End of Faith, a thought-provoking, "brilliant and witty" (Oliver Sacks) look at the notion of free will—and the implications that it is an illusion. A belief in free will touches nearly everything that human beings value. It is difficult to think about law, politics, religion, public policy, intimate relationships, morality—as well as feelings of remorse or personal achievement—without first imagining that every person is the true source of his or her thoughts and actions. And yet the facts tell us that free will is an illusion. In this enlightening book, Sam Harris argues that this truth about the human mind does not undermine morality or diminish the importance of social and political freedom, but it can and should change the way we think about some of the most important questions in life.

Why Free Will Is Real
Why Free Will Is Real

Author: Christian List

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 2019-05-06

Total Pages: 225

ISBN-13: 0674239814

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A crystal-clear, scientifically rigorous argument for the existence of free will, challenging what many scientists and scientifically minded philosophers believe. Philosophers have argued about the nature and the very existence of free will for centuries. Today, many scientists and scientifically minded commentators are skeptical that it exists, especially when it is understood to require the ability to choose between alternative possibilities. If the laws of physics govern everything that happens, they argue, then how can our choices be free? Believers in free will must be misled by habit, sentiment, or religious doctrine. Why Free Will Is Real defies scientific orthodoxy and presents a bold new defense of free will in the same naturalistic terms that are usually deployed against it. Unlike those who defend free will by giving up the idea that it requires alternative possibilities to choose from, Christian List retains this idea as central, resisting the tendency to defend free will by watering it down. He concedes that free will and its prerequisites—intentional agency, alternative possibilities, and causal control over our actions—cannot be found among the fundamental physical features of the natural world. But, he argues, that’s not where we should be looking. Free will is a “higher-level” phenomenon found at the level of psychology. It is like other phenomena that emerge from physical processes but are autonomous from them and not best understood in fundamental physical terms—like an ecosystem or the economy. When we discover it in its proper context, acknowledging that free will is real is not just scientifically respectable; it is indispensable for explaining our world.

The Free Will Delusion
The Free Will Delusion

Author: James B. Miles

Publisher: Troubador Publishing Ltd

Published: 2018-10-02

Total Pages: 312

ISBN-13: 1784628328

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Poverty is not accident, but design. We are not all equal before the law. And the central message of contemporary ethics is that only some people matter.

Free Will and Illusion
Free Will and Illusion

Author: Saul Smilansky

Publisher: OUP Oxford

Published: 2000-03-30

Total Pages: 346

ISBN-13: 019158813X

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Saul Smilansky presents an original treatment of the problem of free will, which lies at the heart of morality and human self-understanding. He maintains that we have most of the resources we need for a proper understanding of the problem; and the key to it is the role played by illusion. The major traditional philosophical approaches are inadequate, Smilansky argues: their partial insights need to be integrated into a hybrid view, which he calls Fundamental Dualism. Common views about justice, responsibility, human worth, and related notions are radically misguided, and the absurd looms large. We do, however, find some justification for enlightened moral views, and grounding for some of our most cherished views of human nature. The bold and perhaps disturbing claim of Free Will and Illusion is that we could not live adequately with a complete awareness of the truth about human freedom: illusion lies at the centre of the human condition. The necessity of illusion is seen to follow from the basic elements of the free will issue, helping keep our moral and psychological worlds intact. Smilansky offers the challenge of recognizing the centrality of illusion and trying to free ourselves to some extent from it; this is not only a philosophical challenge, but a moral and psychological one as well.

Free Will and Consciousness
Free Will and Consciousness

Author: Roy Baumeister

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2010-07-09

Total Pages: 240

ISBN-13: 0199741352

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This volume is aimed at readers who wish to move beyond debates about the existence of free will and the efficacy of consciousness and closer to appreciating how free will and consciousness might operate. It draws from philosophy and psychology, the two fields that have grappled most fundamentally with these issues. In this wide-ranging volume, the contributors explore such issues as how free will is connected to rational choice, planning, and self-control; roles for consciousness in decision making; the nature and power of conscious deciding; connections among free will, consciousness, and quantum mechanics; why free will and consciousness might have evolved; how consciousness develops in individuals; the experience of free will; effects on behavior of the belief that free will is an illusion; and connections between free will and moral responsibility in lay thinking. Collectively, these state-of-the-art chapters by accomplished psychologists and philosophers provide a glimpse into the future of research on free will and consciousness.

The Illusion of Conscious Will
The Illusion of Conscious Will

Author: Daniel M. Wegner

Publisher: MIT Press

Published: 2003-08-11

Total Pages: 743

ISBN-13: 0262290553

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A novel contribution to the age-old debate about free will versus determinism. Do we consciously cause our actions, or do they happen to us? Philosophers, psychologists, neuroscientists, theologians, and lawyers have long debated the existence of free will versus determinism. In this book Daniel Wegner offers a novel understanding of the issue. Like actions, he argues, the feeling of conscious will is created by the mind and brain. Yet if psychological and neural mechanisms are responsible for all human behavior, how could we have conscious will? The feeling of conscious will, Wegner shows, helps us to appreciate and remember our authorship of the things our minds and bodies do. Yes, we feel that we consciously will our actions, Wegner says, but at the same time, our actions happen to us. Although conscious will is an illusion, it serves as a guide to understanding ourselves and to developing a sense of responsibility and morality. Approaching conscious will as a topic of psychological study, Wegner examines the issue from a variety of angles. He looks at illusions of the will—those cases where people feel that they are willing an act that they are not doing or, conversely, are not willing an act that they in fact are doing. He explores conscious will in hypnosis, Ouija board spelling, automatic writing, and facilitated communication, as well as in such phenomena as spirit possession, dissociative identity disorder, and trance channeling. The result is a book that sidesteps endless debates to focus, more fruitfully, on the impact on our lives of the illusion of conscious will.

Exploring the Illusion of Free Will
Exploring the Illusion of Free Will

Author: MR George Ortega

Publisher: George Ortega

Published: 2011-12-02

Total Pages: 181

ISBN-13:

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Note: The author, a cognitive-behavioral psychologist, unabashedly leads the reader through extensive review of the work's major themes and concepts. George Ortega's brilliant and compelling Exploring the Illusion of Free Will is likely to become an historic document. Earlier attempts by a relatively few authors have failed to convince the world that free will is an illusion. However, Ortega's edited transcript of the first 18 episodes of his pioneering Exploring the Illusion of Free Will weekly television series seems likely to succeed. Table of Contents Introduction 2 1. How I Came to See My Causal Will 6 2. Proving Causal Will in Real Time 14 3. Morality Within a Causal Will Perspective 21 4. What it All Means 29 5. We Do Not "Experience" Free Will 37 6. How the Hedonic Imperative Makes Free Will Impossible 46 7. How the Unsolicited Participation of the Unconscious Makes Free Will Impossible 54 8. Asking When a Child Gains it Illuminates the Incoherence of the Concept "Free Will" 63 9. Overcoming our Reluctance to Overcome the Illusion of Free Will 7110. Why Change as the Basic Universal Process Makes Free Will Impossible 81 11. The Absurdity of Varying Degrees of Free Will 9112. Why the Concept of Free Will is Incoherent 10013. Overcoming Blame, Guilt, Envy and Arrogance by Overcoming the Illusion of Free Will 10814. Why Both Causality and Randomness Make Free Will Impossible 11715. Why Frankfurt's "Second Order Desires" Do Not Allow for a Free Will 12716. Overcoming the Illusion of Free Will as an Evolutionary Leap in Human Consciousness 13717. Revitalizing Religion through Transcending the Illusion of Free Will 14718. Why Humans Cannot Circumvent Natural Law to Gain a Free WillIntroduction 156From the Introduction - For we who appreciate speedily arriving at the heart of a matter, here's how to disprove any free will argument in two easy steps: 1. Ask the free will believer to give an example of a choice they consider to be freely willed. 2. Ask the free will believer to say whether or not that choice was caused. Congratulations; you've just succeeded. If the free will believer says the choice was caused, the ensuing causal regression makes free will impossible. If the free will believer says the choice was uncaused, that would mean the choice was random. Random thoughts are clearly not what we mean when we refer to a choice as freely willed. You can easily apply this two-step refutation to any, and all, free will arguments. That's the long and short of it; now the details.From the author: Because of the significance of this very likely world-changing book, I've chosen to, as much as possible and practical, not financially profit from it's sale. For my book to be listed on Amazon.com, Amazon's CreateSpace publishing service requires that I set my list price above $7.03, so I've set it to $7.04. I've also published a FREE online, downloadable, edition at Google Books and The Internet Archive. I'd like to publish for Kindle soon, and Amazon's policy requires that authors charge at least 99 cents for the Kindle edition. However, because I've contributed the online edition to the public domain, I'll hopefully be able to publish a free Kindle edition through one of the Internet libraries.

Living Without Free Will
Living Without Free Will

Author: Derk Pereboom

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2006-11-02

Total Pages: 257

ISBN-13: 0521029961

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Argues that morality, meaning and value remain intact even if we are not morally responsible for our actions.