DoctorMo's Blog

David wrote: Do we [have free will]? We like to think that we do, but a look at the psychological research into the subject of priming leads to some interesting questions with respect to this.

It’s an interesting philosophical question. One that science can’t really answer because of the nature of science as an externalised view on the subject of reality.

We may be completely nailed down to our pre-defined destinies as the supernaturalists would have it. Or we might be completely predictable from a neurological aspect.

Either way, it doesn’t mean we don’t have free will.

The problem is how we think of ourselves and how we think about embodiment. If I am a brain in a body that as a system is predictable, then I am still making my own choices because I _am_ that system.

It only really gets into a lovely problem when you have a soul that sits outside of the universe pulling levers and creating a discrepancy between what the natural reality can predict and the choices we actually make. That discrepancy would be fairly easy to spot too.

All neural science is able to prove is that we have no soul, but it would be unable to get rid of free will without discounting the material that makes up the person as embodying of what that person really is.

Scientists love to have an externalised viewpoint though, so it’s no surprise to me that a lot of scientists (even atheists) subscribe to the supernatural out of body free will argument.

Martin,