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Free Will
Paperback
Published March 1, 2014
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About the author
Mark Balaguer
14 books5 followersMark Balaguer is Professor in the Department of Philosophy at California State University, Los Angeles. He is the author of Platonism and Anti-Platonism in Mathematics and Free Will as an Open Scientific Question (MIT Press).
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
June 6, 2024
Ugh. Dumb. Glib, stupid and utterly unpersuasive. To call it sophistry is a gross insult to Sophists.
Spends the first 120 pages setting up straw man after straw man attacking those who claim free will doesn't exist. But the straw men actually keep getting the better of the argument! The author finally retreats into a very small space in which free will might operate (in the metaphysical realm of ill-defined "torn decisions," don't bother to try figuring it out but its got a lot to do with chocolate and vanilla ice cream).
Ultimately with the last two pages of the book Balaguer states that "I have not argued in this book that we do have free will..." WELL, that's a welcome confession after all the goofy word salad that comes before.
So it's not really a text about Free Will. A better title might have been "A Meandering Polemic Against Those Who Claim There Is No Free Will."
Why in God's name would MIT associate itself with such a hot mess of an "argument."
Spends the first 120 pages setting up straw man after straw man attacking those who claim free will doesn't exist. But the straw men actually keep getting the better of the argument! The author finally retreats into a very small space in which free will might operate (in the metaphysical realm of ill-defined "torn decisions," don't bother to try figuring it out but its got a lot to do with chocolate and vanilla ice cream).
Ultimately with the last two pages of the book Balaguer states that "I have not argued in this book that we do have free will..." WELL, that's a welcome confession after all the goofy word salad that comes before.
So it's not really a text about Free Will. A better title might have been "A Meandering Polemic Against Those Who Claim There Is No Free Will."
Why in God's name would MIT associate itself with such a hot mess of an "argument."
Displaying 1 of 1 review