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Showing posts from September 17, 2020

The Science of Free Will

If science--uncontroversially--starts with, seeks to explain, and builds on observation, George Mason University economist Bryan Caplan asks , why would anyone who is pro-science deny one of our most basic, inescapable, and continuing observations: our freedom to choose among the alternatives that we encounter every day? If something is fundamentally wrong with introspection, let's hear what it is. Moreover, if something is fundamentally wrong with introspection, then something must also be fundamentally wrong with extro spection, i.e., perception. Where's the evidence for that and how was it acquired?  If you reply that together we can compare our individual extrospections, I will counter that we can also compare our individual introspections. In both cases it's called conversation. And by the way, any honest person you ask will tell you they make decisions freely all the time. It takes a philosopher or a neuroscientist to confuse the issue.