Naturalism.org

The best slots in higher education, like the best of anything, are a limited resource in high demand. Admission to a good (or even undeservedly prestigious) high school, college, or graduate school can have life-long ramifications, since diplomas from such institutions give graduates a competitive edge for jobs, leadership positions, high salaries, and economic success and security. So many apply but few are chosen. On what basis should schools decide who gets to get ahead?

Even very smart people can get tangled up in the perennial problem of human freedom, and a good example is astrophysicist Paul Davies, writing in the September/October issue of Foreign Policy. One of the world’s most dangerous ideas, he says, is the scientific and philosophical assault on free will. Why dangerous? Because: “Belief in some measure of free will is common to all cultures and a large part of what makes us human. It is also fundamental to our ethical and legal systems.

This year marks the 80th anniversary of Clarence Darrow’s brilliant and passionate defense of Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb, two wealthy teenagers who pled guilty to the kidnapping and murder of 14 year old Bobby Franks.   On August 22, 1924 Darrow gave his famous twelve hour closing statement, bringing tears to the eyes of the presiding judge and saving his clients from the death penalty.   Here are two excerpts from the summation:

In seeking to establish the existence of what he calls a ‘plain person’s free will’, David Hodgson adduces 8 conditions, the joint satisfaction of which would, he claims, result in our having such free will (proposition 9 asserts this conclusion).  The plain persons’ conception of free will, Hodgson says, is the libertarian conception, in which it is incompatible with determinism.  Although what ordinary people actually believe about free will is an empirical matter in need of research, it’s likely that many people (but not all) have at least a vague

Causality, Victimhood, and Empowerment: How to Hold Addicts Accountable

In his latest book, Freedom Evolves, Tufts University philosopher Daniel Dennett coins the wonderful term “moral levitation” – you’ll even find it in the index. It names what some philosophers and many lay people think is required for morally responsible choices: “Real autonomy, real freedom, requires the chooser be somehow suspended, isolated from the push and pull of…causes, so that when decisions are made, nothing causes them except you!” (p.101-2, original emphasis).

Genes 'hold clue to cancer lifestyles'

6/17/03, BBC News

However, Dr Jonathan Chick, a consultant psychiatrist at the Royal Edinburgh Hospital, who specialises in alcohol problems, told BBC News Online that regardless of the influence of genes, free will still played an important role.

He said: "There is no genetic condition that completely removes free will with respect to drinking or smoking.

Letter to Reason

4/15/03

Reason Magazine 

To the Editor:

Quoted in Jacob Sullum’s review of Pharmacracy: Medicine and Politics in America, Thomas Szasz writes that “Attributing mental illnesses, such as addiction and panic disorder, to biological alterations occurring at a ‘subcellular level’ is a parody of the denial of free will, choice, and responsibility".