Tag: free will

  • Can a Robot Have Free Will?

    Keith Douglas Farnsworth. Can a Robot Have Free Will? Entropy 19, no. 5 (2017): 237. http://www.mdpi.com/1099-4300/19/5/237 “Using insights from cybernetics and an information-based understanding of biological systems, a precise, scientifically inspired, definition of free-will is offered and the essential requirements for an agent to possess it in principle are set out.” “The only systems known…

  • Radical Proof for the Existence of Free Will

    A person denying free will is put into some inquisition tool, say Spanish boot. He is asked: “Do I have free will to stop the torture?”. The answer “Yes” finishes the proof. After “No” the Spanish boot is tightened a bit and the question is repeated. Source: Maarten Hoenen’s lecture on Duns Scotus: http://podcasts.uni-freiburg.de/philosophie-sprache-literatur/philosophie/antike-und-mittelalterliche-philosophie.-ws-12-13/89570101

  • David Bohm on Free Will

    Quotes from David Bohm, Thought as a System p.  72 “We have to be able to think on this clearly; even though, as I said, that by itself won’t really change the reflexes. But if we don’t think of it clearly then all our attempts to get into this will go wrong. Clear thinking implies…

  • Every Event has a Cause as Metaphysics

    In his book An Essay on Metaphysics in Part IIIc Causation, Collingwood has considered what could mean that every event must have a cause. This could be interesting for a discussion on free will, as Collingwood shows that causation presupposes free will. In other words, if free will is to be abandoned, then causation must…

  • Free Will and Mathematics

    Alekandr Lokshin has a book Free Will and Mathematics (in Russian) http://publ.lib.ru/ARCHIVES/L/LOKSHIN_Aleksandr_Aleksandrovich/Lokshin_A.A._Svobodnaya_volya_i_matematika.(2012).pdf.zip and he has started a discussion on the everything list with an abstract of the book in English http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list/t/276f7dffa1c88b0a Alekandr Lokshin, 27.05.2012 20:51: Alexander A. Lokshin FREE WILL AND MATHEMATICS Moscow, MAKS-Press, 2012 , 40 pages (abstract) The general idea of the booklet…

  • Science: Free Will is Illusion

    Richard Dawkings http://www.edge.org/q2006/q06_9.html “But doesn’t a truly scientific, mechanistic view of the nervous system make nonsense of the very idea of responsibility, whether diminished or not? Any crime, however heinous, is in principle to be blamed on antecedent conditions acting through the accused’s physiology, heredity and environment. Don’t judicial hearings to decide questions of blame…

  • Feyerabend on Free Will and Belief

    From book Paul Feyerabend, The Tyranny of Science Chapter 1. Conflict and Harmony. p. 19. “However, there are lots of questions we can ask. Was it good that the ancient philosophers turned the traditional gods into Thought, Fire and unchanging blocks of Being? Was the change they recommended initiated by them or were they swept along…

  • Reason, Free Will, and the Big Bang

    I have recently listened to Kontroversen in der Philosophie by Prof Hoenen: http://www.podcasts.uni-freiburg.de/podcast_content?id_content=93 One of the controversies there was the question whether the Universe if eternal or not. Recently I have employed the logic from the lectures on the everything list http://groups.google.com/group/t/thread/ba5f90b7e68bccf when there was a comment about determinism. I hope that the dialog below shows…