Posted by Jonathan Pearce on Monday, August 6, 2012,
In :
Science
Rather similar to the Gao et al and Walter Mischel research I refer to in my Free Will? book, here is some new evidence showing that completion and attention at age four are accurate predictors of achievement some twenty years later:
Preschool Children Who Can Pay Attention More Likely to Finish College:
Early Reading
and Math Not Predictive of College Completion
ScienceDaily (Aug. 6, 2012) — Young children who are able to
pay attention and persist with a task have a 50 percent great...
Posted by Jonathan Pearce on Monday, July 23, 2012,
In :
Science
Social Deprivation Has a Measurable Effect On Brain
Growth
ScienceDaily (July 23, 2012) — Severe
psychological and physical neglect produces measurable changes in children's
brains, finds a study led by Boston Children's Hospital. But the study also
suggests that positive interventions can partially reverse these changes.
Researchers led by Margaret Sheridan, PhD, and Charles
Nelson, PhD, of the Labs of Cognitive Neuroscience at Boston Children's
Hospital, analyzed brain MRI scans from...
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 ...
Posted by Jonathan Pearce on Friday, May 25, 2012,
In :
Books
A chap called George Ortega contacted me recently about a video of my free will talk to the South Hampshire Humanists. He runs a small local cable project about free will in the States. Anywho, he is planning on using the video as the backbone for four of his cable shows, which is great.
What is more impressive, is this quote from him:
This is far and away the best refutation of free will available anywhere! I'm only about 1/3rd of the way through it, and Johno Pearce wowed me so completely ...
Having looked at biblical issues concerning the position of
deeming h/s morally wrong, let us now look at what makes people h/s and whether
it is fair for an all-loving god to judge them.
Historically, h/s has been seen as a behavioural choice.
However, over recent years, more and more research has been carried out into
the causality of h/s.
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 Tuesday, April 3, 2012,
In :
Philosophy
I am really pleased to announce that I have another speaking engagement booked in Portsmouth, to talk to the Portsmouth Skeptics in the Pub about free will.
The Skeptics in a Pub is a growing secular movement around the country, and I must say, I am really looking forward to 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 Monday, January 23, 2012,
In :
Philosophy
On Sunday, I was lucky enough to have been invited by the South Hampshire Humanists (SHH) to do a talk on free will in Southampton. This was my first public speaking engagement in the world of philosophy and I was both nervous and excited. There was an assembled audience of only 20 people which was nice and intimate. I talked for about 45 minutes and then did a Q and A session afterwards.
Back some months ago I turned up to the SHH drinks in a nearby pub - a social to discuss pertinent subject... 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...
