Reading Time: 10 minutes I sent regular theistic commenter Verbose Stoic (VS) a chapter I was once commissioned to write by John W. Loftus for his anthology Christianity in the Light of Science. VS has written a lengthy critique on his blog here. I have commented a few times there already in answer to some initial grumbles from reading […]
compatibilism
Posted inPhilosophy
Analysing Breuer’s Account of Free Will
Reading Time: 3 minutes Thanks to Luke Breuer for producing his piece on free will the other day and how he thinks you can shoehorn in some level of freedom in a very deterministically constrained reality. First and foremost, please read my piece “Free Will: “We are influenced, but not determined” – the 80-20% approach invalidated”. In it, I […]
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Free Will: Constrained, But Not Completely?
Reading Time: 6 minutes Here is a gratefully received guest post from Luke Breuer, a commenter here with very nuanced theistic tendencies. I asked him to put his thoughts on free will together both in light of my recent pieces arguing against Richard Carrier as well as the fact that we have argued over the years ourselves on this […]
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Responding to Carrier on Free Will (III): Syllogisms, Laypeople & Christians
Reading Time: 18 minutes Recently, I introduced you to the first piece in my response to Richard Carrier as follows: One Christmas present I received this year is a blog piece by Richard Carrier (“Why Syllogisms Usually Suck: Free Will Edition”) going to town on one of my old free will articles expressing determinism/libertarian free will issues in a syllogism: “A […]
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Responding to Carrier on Free Will (I): Control
Reading Time: 10 minutes One Christmas present I received this year is a blog piece by Richard Carrier (“Why Syllogisms Usually Suck: Free Will Edition”) going to town on one of my old free will articles expressing determinism/libertarian free will issues in a syllogism: “A Syllogism for Determinism“. His article was built on the foundation of a previous one: “Free […]
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God’s Own Free Will
Reading Time: 5 minutes I have written variously on this subject before but wanted to bring together two ideas: God cannot have free will. If he does, he could not have used it to create the world. Libertarian free will (as in the conscious and actual ability to choose otherwise in a given scenario, ceteris paribus – LFW) is […]
Posted inPhilosophy
Why Free Will is Real: Response to Harris, Coyne, and Other Determinists – Dr. Christian List
Reading Time: 3 minutes This is a pretty good conversation between Michael Shermer and Dr Christian List of the LSE. List sets out three conditions for his version of free will, which he argues humans ( and others to differing degrees have): Intentional agency Alternative possibilities between which we can choose Causal control over our actions So only goal-directed, […]
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Having a Pop at Modern Compatibilist Atheists
Reading Time: 6 minutes A friend of mine is presently running an “ad” in the Free Enquiry magazine. There are a few ideas I would like to look at here, and I will do so in two posts; this is the second post after looking at “Christian free will” here. The questions to look at in the ad are as […]
Posted inPhilosophy
Christian Free Will and Modern Compatibilist Atheists
Reading Time: 5 minutes A friend of mine is presently running an “ad” in the Free Enquiry magazine. There are a few ideas I would like to look at here, and I will do so in two posts. The questions to look at are as follows. First of all: is the term “Christian free will” meaningfully different to mere […]
Posted inPhilosophy
Dennett, Harris and Free Will
Reading Time: < 1 minute For those who have been unaware of the fascinating conversation between Dan Dennett and Sam Harris in a bar in Banff, here it is. It seeks to bury the hatchet and clear things up over the disagreement that took place a few years ago with regard to Dennett’s review of Harris’ book, and Harris’ subsequent […]