Fate’s scales, quivering

Review essay by "Jenann Ismael on why the problem of free will is not going away" at the Times Literary Supplement.

"The reality of the possibilities is what gives weight to our decisions. It is what keeps us up at night. It is what bestows urgency on sorting out what to do. It is what, in James’s words, 'gives the palpitating reality to our moral life and makes it tingle … with so strange and elaborate an excitement'. But it is the reality of the possibilities that physics seems to contradict."

#cause #liberty #will

The Mystery of Metaphysical Freedom

Peter van Inwagen at The Determinism and Freedom Philosophy Website

(via Joshua Spencer)

#will

Sartre's Muse

Corey Mohler at Existential Comics, with Jean Paul Sartre, and Maurice Merleau-Ponty.

#Liberty #Will

From the Center: Adler on memory and imagination; Bret Stephens; Montaigne; Julia Baggini

Recent communications with members of the Center for the Study of The Great Ideas included:

• Bret Stephens on Radical Parents, Despotic Children and recent events on college campuses
• Montaigne on ends and means
• Julian Baggini on free will
• Mortimer Adler on memory and imagination as one of the Great Ideas
• The Center has received a 2015 Best of Chicago Award
• Remember Pearl Harbor?

Anthropomorphic free will

Get Fuzzy, by Darby Conley, May 12, 2013

Does Contemporary Neuroscience Support or Challenge the Reality of Free Will?

Eddy Nahmias at Big Questions Online

Have It Your Way

Daniel Menaker reviews Free Will, by Sam Harris.

His absolutist position, I should add, because, as he puts it near the beginning of the book: 'Free will is an illusion. ...'

...

...if you want to acquaint yourself with the chapbook basics of this essential argument, Free Will is a good, cogent and readable . . . um, choice.