Is There No Such Thing as Free Will?

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"There's no free will, so, you know, let me go kill somebody and reckon off their face," he says. "You don't need to go to a philosopher an even tofind this intuition." The knowledge of free will is going to make you do things that you already find abhorrent,. but there is the question of whether it will make you more immoral, or feel less like your life or your achievements have value.

Tamler and David discuss whether giving up our belief in free will makes us more likely to abandon our moral standards.

Links

“You Can’t Handle the Truth!”

Jesse Bering “Scientists say free will probably doesn’t exist, but urge: “Don’t stop believing!” Excellent accessible description of the Vohs and Schooler study that we discuss.

Tamler’s blog post in Psychology Today criticizing the pessimistic views of Smilansky and Vohs and Schooler: "No Soul? I can live with that. No free will? Aaahhhh!".

“Eat the poo-poo.” “Like ice cream…”

Josh Knobe on free will and experimental philosophy.

Tamler's dialogue on some of the problems with current experimental work on free will: "Free Will and Experimental Philosophy: An Intervention."

“I want him dead! I want his family dead!”

Uhlmann, Zhu, Pizarro & Bloom “Blood is Thicker: Moral Spillover Effects Based on Kinship”

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