"In 1870, James famously declared himself for free will. In a diary entry for April 30, he wrote, “I think that yesterday was a crisis in my life. I finished the first part of Renouvier’s [French philosopher Charles Renouvier, 1815-1903] second Essais and see no reason why his definition of free will—‘the sustaining of a thought because I choose to when I might have other thoughts’—need be the definition of an illusion. At any rate, I will assume for the present—until next year—that it is no illusion. My first act of free will shall be to believe in free will.”
James identified chance as the source of “ambiguous possibilities” and “alternative futures...”
Philosopher and scientist Robert O. Doyle has a new model of free will | Harvard Magazine Sep-Oct 2012
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.