Science Says ‘No’ To Free Will, Holocaust Survivors Disagree
If free will can exist in prison camps, a laboratory can’t disprove it
“The 20th-century nature-nurture debate prepared us to think of ourselves as shaped by influences beyond our control. …Neuroscience…describes the brain as a physical system like any other, and suggests that we no more will it to operate in a particular way than we will our heart to beat. The contemporary scientific image of human behavior is one of neurons firing, causing other neurons to fire, causing our thoughts and deeds, in an unbroken chain that stretches back to our birth and beyond. In principle, we are therefore completely predictable. If we could understand any individual’s brain architecture and chemistry well enough, we could, in theory, predict that individual’s response to any given stimulus with 100 percent accuracy.” — Stephen Cave, “There’s No Such Thing As Free Will”
Are the choices you make an illusion? At first thought, this question may appear ridiculous. You’ve made at least half a dozen decisions after being out of…
