Last will and testament

No, I’m not dying we’re referring here, yet again, to the ol’ philosophical arguments about free will. Even worse, this may not be the last despite the implications of the title, but c’mon, I haven’t done one in a while so you can’t complain. This one was inspired by re-reading a post from read more

Isn’t that the real truth?

Just in case anyone hasn’t seen this subject the last nine times I approached it, I find ‘free will‘ to be a corrupt concept, a common belief without rational support (which gives it plenty of company.) And no, I’m not going to broach it again. Instead, we’ll look deeper into the question of whether we should retain some illusions.

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Buried at the crossroads

I wish I could draw political-style cartoons, because then I’d open this with an illustration of an unkillable zombie, or maybe Jason from the Friday the 13th franchise, with the label “Free Will” on it…

This time around it’s an article in Slate from Roy F. Baumeister entitled, “ read more

Nuke it from orbit. It’s the only way to be sure

Despite the fact that, just this past weekend (as I type the first draft anyway,) friends of mine have made disparaging comments about debates that take place on the Intersnarl, I return once again to the fabled Fountain of Free Will, a topic sure never to die because philosophy has taught us nothing if not how to continually fail to “get it.”

This time around it’s a post on Why read more

Free if you can get it to work

Unlike too many posts that I’ve seen in the past couple of years, there’s actually a good article on the idea of free will over at the Richard Dawkins Foundation site right now. Zeuglodon does a pretty good job of hashing out the various aspects of it, though read more

Free willy

Some time back I talked about the power of tradition, and why it even has this power. Now, as I approach a topic that’s been stewing in my head for a while, I recognize that this same power is one of the things that seems to be working directly against our understanding and use of a simple subject, so much so that scientific and philosophical debate are actually taking place.

That subject is read more