Yes, Determinists, There Is Free Will You make choices even if your atoms don’t.

[Sanguine]

It’s not just in politics where otherwise smart people consistently talk past one another. People debating whether humans have free will also have this tendency. Neuroscientist and free-will skeptic Sam Harris has dueled philosopher and free-will defender Daniel Dennett for years and once invited him onto his podcast with the express purpose of finally having a meeting of minds. Whoosh! They flew right past each other yet again.

Christian List, a philosopher at the London School of Economics who specializes in how humans make decisions, has a new book, Why Free Will Is Real, that tries to bridge the gap. List is one of a youngish generation of thinkers, such as cosmologist Sean Carroll and philosopher Jenann Ismael, who dissolve the old dichotomies on free will and think that a nuanced reading of physics poses no contradiction for it.

List accepts the skeptics’ definition of free will as a genuine openness to our decisions, and he agrees this seems to be at odds with the clockwork universe of fundamental physics and neurobiology. But he argues that fundamental physics and neurobiology are only part of the story of human behavior. You may be a big bunch of atoms governed by the mechanical laws, but you are not just any bunch of atoms. You are an intricately structured bunch of atoms, and your behavior depends not just on the laws that govern the individual atoms but on the way those atoms are assembled. At a higher level of description, your decisions can be truly open. When you walk into a store and choose between Android and Apple, the outcome is not preordained. It really is on you....

http://nautil.us/issue/72/quandary/yes-determinists-there-is-free-will

Interesting discussion.

[Absalom]

We are created w/imperfection.
Free will is the antidote allowing
us to change in order to improve
ourselves in our lifetime.

[Sanguine]

We are created w/imperfection.
Free will is the antidote allowing
us to change in order to improve
ourselves in our lifetime.

Well said.

[The_Reader_David]

Interesting discussion.

What clockwork universe of fundamental physics?  *sigh* Another author who hasn't understood quantum mechanics.  And yes, there are events in the brain that depend on a single quantum mechanical event (if only because neurons in the retina firing can depend on a single quantum mechanical event).

That said List's arguments based on higher level structures being able to have properties that cannot be read off from the components, but only from their organization, is most assuredly valid and stands as (another) critique of determinism.

[Sanguine]

What clockwork universe of fundamental physics?  *sigh* Another author who hasn't understood quantum mechanics.  And yes, there are events in the brain that depend on a single quantum mechanical event (if only because neurons in the retina firing can depend on a single quantum mechanical event).

That said List's arguments based on higher level structures being able to have properties that cannot be read off from the components, but only from their organization, is most assuredly valid and stands as (another) critique of determinism.

That was the most interesting part.