MARK BALAGUER

Un filósofo considera si los argumentos científicos y filosóficos contra el libre albedrío son razón suficiente para renunciar a nuestra fe en él.En nuestra vida diaria, realmente pareciera que tenemos libre albedrio, que lo que hacemos de un momento a otro esta determinado por decisiones conscientes que tomamos libremente. Te levantas del sofa, sales a caminar, comes helado de chocolate. Pareciera que tenemos el control de acciones como estas; si lo tenemos, entonces gozamos de libre albedrio. Pero en los ultimos años, algunos han argumentado que el libre albedrio es una ilusion. El neurocientifico (y autor de best-sellers) Sam Harris y el fallecido psicologo de Harvard Daniel Wegner, por ejemplo, afirman que ciertos hallazgos cientificos refutan el libre albedrio. En este atractivo y accesible volumen de la serie Conocimientos esenciales, el filosofo Mark Balaguer examina los diversos argumentos y experimentos que se han citado para respaldar la afirmacion de que los seres humanos no tienen libre albedrio y que el considera exagerados y equivocados.Balaguer discute el determinismo, la vision de que todo evento fisico esta predeterminado o es causado completamente por eventos anteriores. Describe varios argumentos filosoficos y cientificos contra el libre albedrio, incluido uno basado en los famosos experimentos neurocientificos de Benjamin Libet, que supuestamente muestran que nuestras decisiones conscientes son causadas por eventos neuronales que ocurren antes de que elijamos. Considera varios puntos de vista religiosos y filosoficos, incluido el compatibilismo. Balaguer concluye que los argumentos en contra del libre albedrio presentados por filosofos, psicologos y neurocientificos simplemente no funcionan. No proporcionan ninguna buena razon para dudar de su existencia. Pero, advierte, que eso tampoco significa necesariamente que lo tengamos. La pregunta de si tenemos libre albedrio sigue abierta; simplemente no sabemos lo suficiente sobre el cerebro para poder responderla definitivamente.

A philosopher considers whether the scientific and philosophical arguments against free will are reason enough to give up our belief in it.In our daily life, it really seems as though we have free will, that what we do from moment to moment is determined by conscious decisions that we freely make. You get up from the couch, you go for a walk, you eat chocolate ice cream. It seems that were in control of actions like these; if we are, then we have free will. But in recent years, some have argued that free will is an illusion. The neuroscientist (and best-selling author) Sam Harris and the late Harvard psychologist Daniel Wegner, for example, claim that certain scientific findings disprove free will. In this engaging and accessible volume in the Essential Knowledge series, the philosopher Mark Balaguer examines the various arguments and experiments that have been cited to support the claim that human beings dont have free will. He finds them to be overstated and misguided.Balaguer discusses determinism, the view that every physical event is predetermined, or completely caused by prior events. He describes several philosophical and scientific arguments against free will, including one based on Benjamin Libets famous neuroscientific experiments, which allegedly show that our conscious decisions are caused by neural events that occur before we choose. He considers various religious and philosophical views, including the philosophical pro-free-will view known as compatibilism. Balaguer concludes that the anti-free-will arguments put forward by philosophers, psychologists, and neuroscientists simply dont work. They dont provide any good reason to doubt the existence of free will. But, he cautions, this doesnt necessarily mean that we have free will. The question of whether we have free will remains an open one; we simply dont know enough about the brain to answer it definitively.

An argument that the problem of free will boils down to an open scientific question about the causal histories of certain kinds of neural events.In this largely antimetaphysical treatment of free will and determinism, Mark Balaguer argues that the philosophical problem of free will boils down to an open scientific question about the causal histories of certain kinds of neural events. In the course of his argument, Balaguer provides a naturalistic defense of the libertarian view of free will.The metaphysical component of the problem of free will, Balaguer argues, essentially boils down to the question of whether humans possess libertarian free will. Furthermore, he argues that, contrary to the traditional wisdom, the libertarian question reduces to a question about indeterminacyin particular, to a straightforward empirical question about whether certain neural events in our heads are causally undetermined in a certain specific way; in other words, Balaguer argues that the right kind of indeterminacy would bring with it all of the other requirements for libertarian free will. Finally, he argues that because there is no good evidence as to whether or not the relevant neural events are undetermined in the way thats required, the question of whether human beings possess libertarian free will is a wide-open empirical question.