I had no choice but to share this article about a new book that says free will is an illusion

[anon15258403]

The thing that always stick in this craw about said framing is the implication that if free will is an illusion, that it doesn’t “exist”.

Illusions - they exist, and when we’re talking inner states… Are words not illusions in some sense? They’re really just patterns of sound, contrasting foreground/background shapes etc. and yet they seem to do some real things at times.

@elliotk

I’d argue that anyone who thinks that the existence or absence of free will can be proven by a scientific experiment doesn’t understand the philosophy very well.

Totally, there seems to be a fairly uni-dimensional notion of existential quanta operating for free-will naysayers. The mind boggles at the recursive gymnastics that would unwind such an experiential sensed mental state from atop a wobbly stack of infinite turtles.

[Entity447B]

@Towlemonkey

It sounds like it rests primarily on the fact that scientists have conducted experiments demonstrating that nerve signals to initiate action are sent from the motor cortex to the muscles before the prefrontal cortex has been has processed the incoming signals from the stimulus.

When I think about this, I take it to mean that conscious thought and choice are only one input to the process that results in our actions.

A lot of people seem to interpret it as meaning that consciousness does nothing at all.

[Soren_Leaver]

Sapolsky tried his darnedest not to write this book.

[anon77190095]

I very much agree that free will is an illusion, I had to pay a lot to get mine done.

[Melizmatic]

Yes, I saw what Mindysan had posted up above, and was reiterating.

O_O

[anon61221983]