Are you absolutely sure you have “free will”? Does a person that has claustrophobia have free will to relax or panic in confined spaces? Does this same person have “free will” to get help to eliminate their phobic responses to confined spaces?
If you have read my previous post you might have concluded that I do not believe we have “free will”. Robert Sapolsky is a professor at Stanford and has recently published his book titled, “Determinined” . Below is an interesting 9 minute podcast about his book:
From Robert’s book: “At some point in this writing process, I was struck with what seemed like the explanation for why I’ve been able to stick with an unshakable rejection of free will, despite the bummers of feelings it can evoke. A point made earlier in the chapter is personally very relevant. Since my teenage years, I’ve struggled with depression. Now and then, the meds work great and I’m completely free of it, and life seems like hiking above the tree line on a spectacular snow-capped mountain. This most reliably occurs when I’m actually doing that with my wife and children. Most of the time, though, the depression is just beneath the surface, kept at bay by a toxic combination of ambition and insecurity, manipulative shit, and a willingness to ignore who and what matter. And sometimes it incapacitates me, where I mistake every seated person as being in a wheelchair and every child I glance at as having Down syndrome.”
A 53 minute video : “ Life without Free Will”