this post was submitted on 18 Oct 2023
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[–] Zombiepirate@lemmy.world 9 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Determinism is about 3,000 year old philosophy.

What is he really adding here? It was my impression that most scientists are either determinists or compatiblists already.

[–] maegul@lemmy.ml 5 points 1 year ago

Yea the article doesn’t seem to be philosophically literate enough it seems to speak at that level, unfortunately. IME, neuroscientists and psychologies do a poor job of being aware of when they’re venturing into philosophical territory and then doing a good job of covering their bases. Often times they are cringey about it in how self-conscious they are about their lack of knowledge. But I’d guess it also goes the other way too.

Something I personally took from the article was that the counter provided in favour of free will from a Neuro perspective seemed pretty embarrassing. Neurological variation, ASFAICT, doesn’t necessitate free will, and for that to be the case would require neuroscience to have a complete theory/account of consciousness. Otherwise, all neuroscience would have is a source of randomness coupled with priming by history and state and a pile of complexity that makes the output function tricky/chaotic.