Human Anatomy - Nervous System, Neuroscience, Free Will & Determinism, Neurology, Neuropsychology & Neuropsychiatry, Neuroanatomy
Log in to track your reading progress.
Overview
It is widely accepted in science that the universe is a closed deterministic system in which everything can, ultimately, be explained by purely physical causation. And yet we all experience ourselves as having the freedom to choose between alternatives presented to us -- 'we' are in the driving seat.
Editorials
A.C. Grayling
On the face of it, advances in brain science in recent decades make the old mind-body problem seem redundant, because even if we still do not know how grey matter gives rise to the polychrome pyrotechnics of consciousness - how the firing of axons translates into the delicate hue and heady fragrance of the rose, or the pain inflicted by its thorns, or the hum of the bee visiting it - nevertheless, it is obvious and undeniable that minds are somehow secreted by brains, which means that minds are part of the natural material realm. But the material realm is a deterministic one - everything that happens in it has a cause; there is nothing new under the sun but what was implicit in, and brought about by, antecedent conditions. And that means that mental phenomena are causally determined; which means that we have no free will. We do what we do because we must; our doings are the products of earlier determined events, running back from effect to cause into the history of the world before we were born.—Times Literary Supplement
Book Details
Published
October 10, 1999
Publisher
Imprint Academic
Pages
298
Format
Hardcover
ISBN
9780907845508