The posts on this blog were mostly considered emails written to people interested in a particular approach to addressing the problems facing humanity and our relationship to the planet. If you are interested in what you read - please leave a comment...

December 12, 2011

Freiwillige Selbstkontrolle

There - that's a catchy title for a blog post, innit? This one'll go viral for sure.....
Actually, I'm being wilfully obscure (me?) - Freiwillige Selbstkontrolle were (are, it seems) a German post-punk band, whereas this post is actually about the implications of suggestions by scientists that free will is an illusion, written in response to this interesting post: The survival value of 'free' will.
In summary, the post rehearses recent suggestions from a number of scientific angles that free will does not exist, and looks at why we might have stuck with (developed?) such an illusion for evolutionary reasons.
I have read quite a bit around this topic - it comes up in New Scientist fairly frequently - and I've frequently come across this sort of statement;

"So why then do we believe in free will?
It’s simple: if we didn’t, we’d all die a lot sooner.