Why the Lack of Free Will isn’t (only) tied to Naturalism

 determinism, free will, incompatibiism, naturalism  Comments Off on Why the Lack of Free Will isn’t (only) tied to Naturalism
Aug 202014
 

Free Will Illusion Fairy

Naturalism is the belief that nothing exists outside of the natural world.  Many people denote that if naturalism is true (which I believe is the case) that the laws that govern the universe are what make everything happen. That everything which happens in the universe is a physical play out through time. And that means everything single thing, including our conscious thought and decision-making. That these happenings aren’t some magical exceptions to the physics of the universe. In such a natural universe, things such as “free will” just don’t make sense. If our decisions are tied to the physical processes of the universe, then we only have a say in them in so far as the physical processes output what we will say about them. In other words, what we think, feel, say, and do are all an output of how the universe is playing out (both large scale and small scale processes).

And even if we accept that some events don’t have a cause (e.g. certain interpretations of quantum mechanics), those un-caused events are just part of the physical process that we still have no control over.

Though I agree with such analysis for various reasons, I think the incoherence of free will has a much wider reach. In other words, we don’t have to accept a naturalistic worldview to understand that free will doesn’t make any sense what-so-ever.

We just need to understand that an event (something “happening”) must either have a cause (be an output of something that already exists), or not have a cause (just happen – not the output of anything in existence). These are the only two possibilities for events. Not just “naturalistic” events, but any event. A so-called “supernatural” event simply can’t escape this dichotomy. Continue reading »

Oct 182013
 

I’ve recreated the cover of my book and revamped my website. Yes, I’m still editing it. It’s taking a long time as I’m quite the perfectionist. I’m thinking I will have to let a few things go in regards to wording if I’m ever to get my book out to the world (at least for the first edition)! As you might know, I’m not only a writer of philosophy, but I’m also an artist (see TricksPlace.com), a WordPress site builder / designer, a freelancer, and a entrepreneur (I always have a project going on). I don’t write my books full-time for a living (though would love to as they are my passion…along with my art that is).

That being said, I’m also looking to illustrate parts of my book, another time consuming objective if I get to it. We’ll see how many illustrations I can do that can help people visualize certain key concepts.

This site I had just sort of thrown up a while back, and I’m just now starting to revamp it. I’ve recreated my book cover (done in Photoshop) and I also added a new theme for the website with a new header based on the book cover!

My new book cover:

Breaking the Free Will Illusion - BOOK COVER

Let me know what you think in the comments below! The idea was to keep it readable and simple, sort of showing a zoomed out “watcher” perceptive of inter-related connections. No doubt I may end up revising it more before the book is finally complete. We’ll see.

Anyway, I may blog on here a little more frequently, so please connect by subscribing.