Some people ask why free will doesn’t exist. They often don’t even know the very basics to these questions (or where to look to find answers). Point them to this InfoGraphic so they can get a quick visual snapshot (and then hopefully they will look into the matter more). Feel free to download and share this InfoGraphic (please do not alter it) on any website , social media, and so on. And please educate people in this important topic!
Above is the official “basics” to why free will doesn’t exist. Of course the basics don’t entail all of the details, but such is a “snapshot” for why free will doesn’t exist to give newbies to the topic a “jumpstart”. It gives a quick overview of the definition of free will that is of importance, and why such ability is impossible. It explains that such is logically incompatible for both determinism and indeterminism, and the parts of the ability that are problematic. It also gives a brief summary of those huge topics that the belief in free will embeds itself into.
I give anyone permission to download, use, and share this InfoGraphic in it’s unaltered state. I’d appreciate a link back to this page or website if at all possible.
If you haven’t ordered your copy of Breaking the Free Will Illusion for the Betterment of Humankind, do so today! It’s in Kindle and paperback versions. And if you like what’s in it (which I think you will), I’d be grateful for a review on Amazon.com.
Thanks,
‘Trick
'Trick Slattery
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6 Responses to “Why Free Will Doesn’t Exist – InfoGraphic”
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Hi there,
I happened to find you as I was googling and I saw that you wrote a book on the illusion of free will. To give you a little background, my father made a discovery in 1959 which lies behind the door of determinism. This knowledge has the potential to revolutionize our world for the better. Unfortunately, my father was unable to bring his knowledge to light during his lifetime because he was not a member of a leading university, and held no distinguishing titles. He could not get conventionally published for that reason, so he had to resort to self-publishing which had its own set of limitations. I recently compiled 7 of his books but found out very quickly that this is an emotional issue. Most people are libertarians or compatibilists, not hard determinists.
I am sure you are busy with your own projects but I thought that you might be interested in seeing how he reconciles the issue of moral responsibility with determinism. I am trying to get some fair and balanced reviews which is why I am looking for people who are not only well versed in this subject matter but also lean toward determinism. It this piques your interest, maybe we can swap books. You can read the first chapter online or you can hear my father read and elaborate on Chapter One of his 6th book: Beyond the Framework of Modern Thought. In the 70’s he had the presence of mind to make 12 tapes which I converted to a CD and then to an mp3 which I recently uploaded. I hope we get a chance to communicate by email. It’s nice to talk to other like minded people. Thanks for listening. Sincerely, Janis Rafael
Hi Janis. Glad you stopped by. I have a backlog of reading to do, but if you have a kindle version I’d certainly do a bookswap with you (kindle for kindle). My next book will be on ethics (re: morality without free will) and I consider myself a secular moral philosopher. Do me a favor and, when you have a chance, send me an email from the contact page on my site and we’ll talk more in email. 🙂
Later,
‘Trick
I’ve just watched most of Sam Harris’s speech on Free Will at a Canadian dinner. My observation/question is this: Assuming we are fully animals no special souls etc,to me free will is a descriptive account of the human condition, as well as a idealistic notion. Aren’t we simply showing that we can’t successfully describe our ability to think and decide what to do? That we fail to demonstrate our idealistic free will is the same as not being able to know what free will is.
I test this with a question: Imagine Earth is visited by Aliens, and they allow us to investigate them and find that, indeed, they have free will. What would this look like so that we conclude that we are missing some ability compared to these free will endowed aliens?
Hi Andrew – thanks for stopping by. Great, Sam is a good starting point on this topic. 🙂
The free will definition that I think is the ability most people intuitively feel they possess, and also the ability that is of philosophical importance for so many other topics, is here: free will
And this ability is logically incoherent (contradictory, etc). That means people, aliens, souls, and even a god could not logically possess it. I think we could successfully describe our ability to think and decide what to do without injecting in that the other options we think about were ever “real” possibilities. 😉
Thank you for your response, I read your link to your piece on what free will is. I still wonder though…
What if we look to make a decision using a formal methodology, setting out criteria and weightings and then assess the options against the criteria – so long as we didn’t set out to fix this, then would the decision (say pizza over a sandwich) be somehow not ours?
I then suppose that what is being postulated is that if we carried on, and down the line, we became able to view the brain and consciousness at a minute level – we might see that every nuance/feeling/experience effectively sets up our reaction to any particular future situation and that this then means we can’t possess free will?
Thanks again, I will be looking into this more.
All excellent questions, and I believe you answered your own question. Any formal methodology we use, the criteria we pick, and how we weigh such, all stem causally, and what causes those causes stems causally, etc.
And it’s more than just the set up of our brain state at a given moment, though that is part of it, but how our very structure is set up as well as the entirety of the environment that surrounds us at each moment. It all, as you say “sets up our reaction to any particular future situation”. There is a reason the illusion is such a strong one. We simply don’t see all of the variables that go into each step in our process and output of a decision. 🙂