Posted: Nov 29, 2016 1:21 pm
GrahamH wrote:ughaibu wrote:Go on then, show me how you establish the reality of the external world and the reality of gravity but do not, thereby, establish the reality of free will.
WTF?
Are you suggesting that dropping an apple establishes free will?
Maybe you think "establishing the reality of the external world" is another of those trivially easy philosophical puzzles that has been running for centuries just because most philosophers are not as smart as you and Dr Johnson.
As far as I can tell, you don't have to go as deep as that. It seems to be an appeal to obviousness. Just as gravity is obvious, so is free will, because both can be observed to happen.
Unfortunately, recent science does not back this up and you only, it seems, have to look closely enough.
In one of the experiments I linked to, the researcher found that the brain makes a decision before (up to 7 seconds before) the brain's owner becomes aware of it, to the extent that the researchers can predict, significantly above chance, what the brain's owner will do before he or she either does it or is conscious of having decided to do it.
That appears to undermine the idea of free will, and I would love to hear how it does not.