Category: Free will
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Walking without help. Fate. Genes. Modern neuroscience.
Many new parents still think that babies should develop at their own pace and that they should not be challenged to do things that they are not yet ready for. Infants should learn to roll around under their own power, without any "helpful" nudges, and they should not support their weight before they can stand…
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Deciding. How? Fate vs. Free will 1-1 (or perhaps the match did not even start)
How is the brain able to use past experiences to guide decision-making? A few years ago, researchers supported by the National Institutes of Health discovered in rats that awake mental replay of past experiences is critical for learning and making informed choices. Now, the team has discovered key secrets of the underlying brain circuitry -…
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Empathy: Feeling sad for one death. Not caring for millions… All a matter of choice.
ONE death is a tragedy. One million is a statistic. You’ve probably heard this saying before. It is thought to capture an unfortunate truth about empathy: While a single crying child or injured puppy tugs at our heartstrings, large numbers of suffering people, as in epidemics, earthquakes and genocides, do not inspire a comparable reaction.…
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Freedom of choice? Causality. Being "free" via slavery to the "laws"…
Professor Ted Honderich in his book On Determinism and Freedom (2005) argues that the notion of free will that lies behind all talk of choices and responsibility is incoherent, and cannot be assimilated to the account of physical reality the sciences have arrived at. In particular, Honderich objects to the notion of origination: that is,…
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Get drunk. Give up free will.
As any fan of Drunk History knows, people don’t exactly talk the same when they’re drunk. Now, some scientists are attempting to gather enough information to accurately predict a person’s drunkenness based on a simple conversation. Scientists in Germany created the first database of drunk speech patterns, called the Alcohol Language Corpus, which they put…
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