Free will: Dennett says not disproven by current science (Introduction)

by David Turell @, Saturday, October 18, 2014, 01:34 (3477 days ago) @ GateKeeper

In a review of a book, "Why Science Hasn't Disproved Free Will, philosopher Alfred Mele, Dennett agrees that free will is not disproven buy current reductionist studies.-http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/features/are-we-free-"Mele provides accurate, jargon-free accounts of the experiments and what they do and don't show. And in each case he locates what, in my opinion, are the most fundamental flaws in the reasoning by those scientists."-"these scientists have not come close to demonstrating that free will, in either sense, is an illusion. Their ingenious experiments, while yielding some surprising results, don't have the revolutionary implications often claimed.
 
"Mele is not the first philosopher to reach this dismissive verdict, but it may well be that his tactical neutrality on the issue of compatibilism will win him the support of the vast majority of philosophers who have thought hard about free will: we philosophers disagree vehemently about whether compatibilist free will is the only kind of free will worth wanting (as I, for one, have argued for many years), but we agree with Mele that the scientists have jumped to unwarranted conclusions, for the reasons he presents so calmly and clearly in this little book."-
I wonder what commenter Romansh would say?


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