Determinism - You Decide?
There is a new book out advocating an old idea, that humans possess no free will. Determined by Robert Sapolsky. I don't wish to engage his arguments directly, but rather quickly review the basis on which those arguments must be assessed. First, the idea that humans do not possess free will is hardly a new idea. It is found in the oldest forms of Buddhism (Therevada) based on careful analysis of the laws of cause and effect in relation to the human mind that creates the samsara world . Mahayana Buddhism tackled some of the inherit problems in that system and came up with alternative answers. Another kind of determinism was put forward by Christian and later Muslim theologians who asserted that for God to be omnipotent and omniscient no human volition could exist. It was an argument based in logic that appeared impenetrable unless one considers that the axiomatic assumptions are unproven and contradict human experience. More modern forms of determinism were ...