Tuesday, January 02, 2007

Free Will

“Free will does exist, but it’s a perception, not a power or a driving force. People experience free will. They have the sense they are free."

“The more you scrutinize it, the more you realize you don’t have it,” [Mark Hallett, a researcher with the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke,] said.

That is hardly a new thought. The German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer said, as Einstein paraphrased it, that “a human can very well do what he wants, but cannot will what he wants.”

Einstein, among others, found that a comforting idea. “This knowledge of the non-freedom of the will protects me from losing my good humor and taking much too seriously myself and my fellow humans as acting and judging individuals,” he said.

Read the whole thing, as they say.

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