Free Will
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Narrated by:
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Steven Menasche
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By:
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Mark Balaguer
About this listen
The MIT Press Essential Knowledge series
In our daily lives, it really seems as though we have free will, that what we do from moment to moment is determined by conscious decisions that we freely make. You get up from the couch, you go for a walk, you eat chocolate ice cream. It seems that we're in control of actions like these; if we are then we have free will. But in recent years, some have argued that free will is an illusion. The neuroscientist (and best-selling author) Sam Harris and the late Harvard psychologist Daniel Wegner, for example, claim that certain scientific findings disprove free will. In this engaging and accessible volume in the Essential Knowledge series, the philosopher Mark Balaguer examines the various arguments and experiments that have been cited to support the claim that human beings don't have free will. He finds them to be overstated and misguided.
Balaguer discusses determinism, the view that every physical event is predetermined, or completely caused by prior events. He describes several philosophical and scientific arguments against free will, including one based on Benjamin Libet's famous neuroscientific experiments, which allegedly show that our conscious decisions are caused by neural events that occur before we choose. He considers various religious and philosophical views, including the philosophical pro-free-will view known as compatibilism. Balaguer concludes that the anti-free-will arguments put forward by philosophers, psychologists, and neuroscientists simply don't work. They don't provide any good reason to doubt the existence of free will. But, he cautions, this doesn't necessarily mean that we have free will. The question of whether we have free will remains an open one; we simply don't know enough about the brain to answer it definitively.
PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying reference material will be available in your My Library section along with the audio.
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Over a storied career, Daniel C. Dennett has engaged questions about science and the workings of the mind. His answers have combined rigorous argument with strong empirical grounding. And a lot of fun. Intuition Pumps and Other Tools for Thinking offers seventy-seven of Dennett’s most successful “imagination-extenders and focus-holders” meant to guide you through some of life’s most treacherous subject matter: evolution, meaning, mind, and free will.
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Loved it, but some philosophy background needed.
- By LongerILiveLessIKnow on 11-14-13
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The Reason
- By: William Sirls
- Narrated by: Johnny Heller
- Length: 12 hrs and 31 mins
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When facing the impossible, will you believe? Storm clouds gather over a small Michigan town. As thunder shakes the sky, the lights inside St. Thomas Church flicker...and then go out. All is black until a thick bolt of lightning slices the sky, striking the church’s large wooden cross - leaving it ablaze and splintered in two. When the storm ends, the search for answers begins. James Lindy, the church’s blind minister, wonders how his small congregation can repair the cross and keep their faith in the midst of adversity.
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Heart warming and heart breaking
- By Stacey on 10-19-13
By: William Sirls
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Moral Tribes
- Emotion, Reason, and the Gap Between Us and Them
- By: Joshua Greene
- Narrated by: Mel Foster
- Length: 14 hrs and 53 mins
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A pathbreaking neuroscientist reveals how our social instincts turn Me into Us, but turn Us against Them - and what we can do about it. The great dilemma of our shrinking world is simple: never before have those we disagree with been so present in our lives. The more globalization dissolves national borders, the more clearly we see that human beings are deeply divided on moral lines - about everything from tax codes to sexual practices to energy consumption - and that, when we really disagree, our emotions turn positively tribal.
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Good Science, Bad Philosophy
- By Jacob on 10-27-16
By: Joshua Greene
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Undeniable
- How Biology Confirms Our Intuition That Life Is Designed
- By: Douglas Axe
- Narrated by: Neil Hellegers
- Length: 7 hrs and 14 mins
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Throughout his distinguished and unconventional career, engineer-turned-molecular-biologist Douglas Axe has been asking the questions that much of the scientific community would rather silence. Now, he presents his conclusions in this brave and pioneering book. Axe argues that the key to understanding our origin is the "design intuition" - the innate belief held by all humans that tasks we would need knowledge to accomplish can be accomplished only by someone who has that knowledge.
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Seductively Challenge what are consider facts
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By: Douglas Axe
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Why Does the World Exist?
- An Existential Detective Story
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Author Jim Holt explores the greatest metaphysical mystery of all: why is there something rather than nothing? This runaway best seller, which has captured the imagination of critics and the public alike, traces our latest efforts to grasp the origins of the universe. Holt adopts the role of cosmological detective, traveling the globe to interview a host of celebrated scientists, philosophers, and writers.
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Fatal Reader Flaw
- By Let's Be Reasonable on 05-09-14
By: Jim Holt
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What the Bleep Do We Know
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- By: William Arntz, Betsy Chase, Mark Vicente
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With the help of 14 leading physicists, scientists, and spiritual thinkers, this book guides listeners on a course from the scientific to the spiritual, and from the universal to the personal. Along the way, it asks such questions as: Are we seeing the world as it really is What is the relationship between our thoughts and our world? How can I create my day every day? What the Bleep answers this question and others through an innovative new approach to self-help and spirituality.
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Attacking straw men
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Being Logical
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Logic is synonymous with reason, judgment, sense, wisdom, and sanity. Being logical is the ability to create concise and reasoned arguments - arguments that build from given premises, using evidence, to a genuine conclusion. But mastering logical thinking also requires studying and understanding illogical thinking, both to sharpen one's own skills and to protect against incoherent or deliberately misleading reasoning. Elegant, pithy, and precise, Being Logical breaks logic down to its essentials through clear analysis, accessible examples, and focused insights.
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Very Easy To Absorb
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By: D.Q. McInerny
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There Is a God
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In There Is a God, one of the world's preeminent atheists discloses how his commitment to "follow the argument wherever it leads" led him to a belief in God as Creator. This is a compelling and refreshingly open-minded argument that will forever change the atheism debate.
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Disappointing
- By Rebekah Hull on 08-03-21
By: Antony Flew, and others
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Out of Our Heads
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Alva Noë is one of a new breed - part philosopher, part cognitive scientist, part neuroscientist - who are radically altering the study of consciousness by asking difficult questions and pointing out obvious flaws in the current science. In Out of Our Heads, he restates and reexamines the problem of consciousness, and then proposes a startling solution: Do away with the 200-year-old paradigm that places consciousness within the confines of the brain.
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A bold, yet ultimately unsupported, hypothesis
- By Keith Pyne-Howarth on 01-17-10
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Mastermind
- How to Think Like Sherlock Holmes
- By: Maria Konnikova
- Narrated by: Karen Saltus
- Length: 10 hrs
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No fictional character is more renowned for his powers of thought and observation than Sherlock Holmes. But is his extraordinary intellect merely a gift of fiction, or can we learn to cultivate these abilities ourselves, to improve our lives at work and at home? We can, says psychologist and journalist Maria Konnikova, and in Mastermind she shows us how. Beginning with the "brain attic", Konnikova unpacks the mental strategies that lead to clearer thinking and deeper insights.
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Mindless: How to Regurgitate Useless Information
- By CC on 02-12-13
By: Maria Konnikova
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The Book of Why
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"Correlation does not imply causation". This mantra has been invoked by scientists for decades and has led to a virtual prohibition on causal talk. But today, that taboo is dead. The causal revolution, sparked by Judea Pearl and his colleagues, has cut through a century of confusion and placed causality - the study of cause and effect - on a firm scientific basis.
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Great book! Not a great audiobook.
- By rrwright on 05-30-18
By: Judea Pearl, and others
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The Philosophical Baby
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In the last decade there has been a revolution in our understanding of the minds of infants and young children. We used to believe that babies were irrational, and that their thinking and experience were limited. Now Alison Gopnik - a leading psychologist and philosopher, as well as a mother - explains the cutting-edge scientific and psychological research that has revealed that babies learn more, create more, care more, and experience more than we could ever have imagined.
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Good info, annoying narrator
- By Anonymous User on 05-17-10
By: Alison Gopnik
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it's okay
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Good points but rambling
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What listeners say about Free Will
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- Ryan
- 05-14-23
Learned what I wanted to know about the arguments for and against Free Will
If you are looking for a relatively brief synopsis of the philosophical and scientific arguments for and against the concept of Free Will, then here you go! I wanted to be caught up to speed on the topic as I have heard it come up in philosophical debates a lot, and now I feel more informed. Occasionally humorous and interesting, though sometimes the author repeats himself quite a bit to drive certain points home. Recommended.
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- Serial Amazon Shopper
- 06-20-24
Basic Intro. Could be summed up in a 15min YouTube video.
6/10 book. I don’t even think the author was bad. The book was well written. It was just a scientific perspective in free will, which I would say is a pretty philosophical and metaphysical concept. The book wasn’t very groundbreaking, but I suppose it’s a quick read/listen to get briefed on the topic before going in to do further philosophical study and metaphysical exploration.
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- BK Collins
- 12-14-21
Educational Insight!
Not afraid to educate and illustrate beyond the norm. Well constructed. I would have like to hear more against the spiritual side...
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- Yo Mero
- 02-09-23
Religious bias
If you want a confirmation bias arguments about free will, look no more, this can be your playbook.
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- David James
- 07-12-23
Severely lacking: stay away
This might be the worst philosophy book I’ve ever read (out of dozens). Given that this is a philosophy book by a philosophy professor, I expect a certain level of quality. This book fails to meet that bar. Balaguer’s book is dragged down by numerous flaws:
- Free will involves a fascinating web of ideas, but somehow this book squanders the liveliness of the topic.
- It does not introduce the essential basics of quantum physics. This would form a basis for discussing possible connections between free will and QP. Such an intro could be done in a few paragraphs; I’m dumbstruck at this omission.
- Substantively, I find his explanation of torn decisions to be poorly introduced and argued. It comes out of nowhere, and yet is central to his views. But the logic supporting it is dubious. (Even if you agree with Balaguer’s emphasis on torn decisions, I think you will grant his writing gets in his own way.)
- He makes too many off-hand remarks. For example, Balaguer makes wild claims like (paraphrased) ‘the world would not change at all if everyone agreed that there was no free will’. Such a claim is implausible and no support is given for it.
- The style is painful. This is a widespread complaint among the comments here.
- Nitpick: Calling people that deny free will “enemies of free will” is unnecessary, uncharitable, and distracting. Hopefully we’re all trying to seek the truth; someone who denies free will is not an “enemy” of it. This kind of imprecise and annoying writing should not have gotten past the editors.
- The numerous fascinating implications and questions about free will don’t get discussed at all. For example: if free will doesn’t exist, how does this mesh with most peoples lived experience?
Note: I actually listened to this book via Audible. The narrator is a ham, but that’s probably because he wanted to exude the author’s style. So, well done, Mr. Narrator. (Could you imagine a serious, straight-faced narrator reading this book?)
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