

Free Will is a Cognitive Illusion - gmays
http://bigthink.com/in-their-own-words/free-will-is-a-cognitive-illusion

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brownbat
> And personally, I don’t think that there is such a thing as free will. I
> think it’s an illusion.

If the natural state is that no one controls any of their actions, then
putting people in chains takes nothing from them.

It's these sort of reductios that make me suspect hard determinism is silly.

But free will seems silly too. Decisionmaking comes from a physical process,
or it comes magically from somewhere else. The latter seems, to use one of
Quine's insults, "ontologically profligate."

Maybe the debate between free will and determinism is just an artifact of
language.

A sentence like "He chose to take the bus" make perfect sense to me; it
conveys information. But so does a sentence like, "He comes from a long line
of bus takers, and that provides a fully adequate account to explain why he
took the bus." (Even if that sentence sounds a bit silly, I get what it's
conveying.)

The hidden premise fueling the debate between free will and determinism is
that it only makes sense to explain any phenomenon in exactly one way. But why
is it hot? It's summer. You're standing next to the open oven. There's an
atmosphere to retain heat. Atoms are hitting you. The universe is nonempty.
None of these explanations need crowd out all the others, they're each useful
in a different context.

Similarly, "Why did he kill her with the knife?" will have different answers
for the domain of law, psychology, biology, and physics.

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dmfdmf
Define "cognitive illusion" without using the concept of "free will". Thank
you.

~~~
qbrass
When the brain tries to draw associations with one point in time to previous
events, something happens where the memory of making those associations
appears to have occurred before the original point in time.

~~~
dmfdmf
If you are trying to convince me of anything then you are assuming that I have
the free will to change my mind.

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sandymcmurray
I think not.

