Posted by Jonathan Pearce on Wednesday, June 13, 2012,
In :
Philosophy
i am pretty excited about tonight's talk on free will to the Portsmouth Skpetics in a Pub group. Hopefully there'll be a good turn out. Free will seems to really be on the agenda at the moment. People are talking about it and it features on programmes such as Horizon, Radio 4 and suchlike. There is certainly an appetite fro the debate.
Posted by Jonathan Pearce on Saturday, May 26, 2012,
In :
Philosophy
I have been discussing with someone about moral responsibility with regards to determinism, free will and compatibilism.
Compatibilists often claim, as per David Hume, that the agent has free will because they are not being physically coerced to do something by another agent. However, a hard determinist such as myself will simply claim that that coercion is internal, and not external. The causal process is what makes an agent do something, and this may take its form in other agents, genetics,... Continue reading ...
In a remote corner of the universe, on a small blue planet
gravitating around a humdrum sun in the outer districts of the Milky Way,
organisms arose from the primordial mud and ooze in an epic struggle for
survival that spanned aeons.
Posted by Jonathan Pearce on Thursday, April 26, 2012,
In :
Books
I thought, as I was reading through Free Will? again for a reprint, that it was worth posting this. It is still, to me, a really powerful argument against the sort of God we all know and love....
Normally, there are two
ways of seeing theological determinism. Firstly, the soft type, called soft
theological determinism, allows for humans to have free will, even though God
knows what they are going to do. The hard type means that humans do not have
any free will, and G...
Posted by Jonathan Pearce on Thursday, April 19, 2012,
In :
Science
Can Behavior Be Controlled by Genes? The Case of Honeybee Work Assignments
ScienceDaily (Apr. 18, 2012) — What worker bees do depends on how old they are. A worker a few days old will become a nurse bee that devotes herself to feeding larvae (brood), secreting beeswax to seal the cells that contain brood and attending to the queen.
After about a week, she will progress to other tasks, such as grooming nest mates, ventilating the nest and packing pollen. Only at the end of her life will she be...
Posted by Jonathan Pearce on Friday, April 13, 2012,
In :
Youtube
Here is the video of the talk I did on free will to the South Hampshire Humanists in January of this year. Let me know what you think. The questions got cut off at the end.
Posted by Jonathan Pearce on Tuesday, April 10, 2012,
In :
Science
Born Nice? Peoples' Niceness May Reside in Their Genes, Study Finds
ScienceDaily (Apr. 10, 2012) — It turns out that the milk of human kindness is evoked by something besides mom's good example. Research by psychologists at the University at Buffalo and the University of California, Irvine, has found that at least part of the reason some people are kind and generous is that their genes nudge them toward it.
Posted by Jonathan Pearce on Sunday, February 5, 2012,
In :
Philosophy
Thanks to the South Hampshire Humanists who invited me to speak to them about free will last month. They have reviewed the talk in their recent newsletter:
… we were treated to an excellent exposition of the
determinist position from our member Jonathan Pearce, suitably accompanied by
slides. He began by reminding us of the three main positions — Libertarian (we
own the decisions we make), Determinist (everything we do is determined by past
conditions) and Compatibilist (Determinism and Fr...
Posted by Jonathan Pearce on Wednesday, January 18, 2012,
In :
Books
Kindle formatting is a nightmare. Not being able to accept tables for free-flowing text is a headache. For my twins book, which had loads of tables, it really proved frustrating. There were some glitches for the Free Will? book too (as well as a duplicated quote). I have now tidied them up and resubmitted a better .prc file for the Kindle version on Amazon. Anyone who has bought an earlier version, let me know (with proof) and I can send you a rectified file. Continue reading ...
Posted by Jonathan Pearce on Friday, December 16, 2011,
In :
Philosophy
When people claim things like free will is an illusion, as i do, then critics often hit back with "Why expect something so obvious to be false? Why not accept it on face value as you do most everything else int eh world?" etc. etc. This is an appeal to intuition as being a form of (reliable) knowledge.
The issue here is that many, many things in our world are not as they seem. Our interpretation of reality is exactly that an interpretation - and there is no guaranteeing its accuracy. Let me re... Continue reading ...
Posted by Jonathan Pearce on Tuesday, November 29, 2011,
In :
Philosophy
I've recently written a new essay which I have posted here in the essay section of the website. Please read it and see what you think. Post any comments to it here. Here is the abstract to the essay:
Abstract: This essay sets out to dispel the myth that the soul can be the originator for free will. I will start the essay by establishing the Cartesian idea of what the body is and showing that Descartes and modern biology indicate that the body is a biological machine. After indicating how Desca... Continue reading ...
Posted by Jonathan Pearce on Saturday, October 29, 2011,
In :
Philosophy
I am going to use an unlikely tool to show the philosophical
veracity of determinism – the belief that we have no free will. The evidence I
am going to bring to the stand is / are Jedward. For those who don’t know them,
they were X-Factor sensations from Ireland – identical twins who are
so similar you just can’t tell them apart. And they do EVERYTHING together.
So, let’s look at free will. I do not want to get into the
intricacies of free will here (you can read my book...
Posted by Jonathan Pearce on Saturday, April 16, 2011,
In :
Religion
I was wondering recently about
the issue of God’s foreknowledge. It has long been understood that with God’s
omniscience, he could not be contrary to his own predictions. This means that
if God predicted beforehand that he would make himself a spaghetti bolognaise
for supper on Friday, then when it came to making Friday’s supper, he would
have no choice but to make the spaghetti bolognaise. This is because if he
decided to be contrary to his own prediction and cook, say, pizza, then his...
