FreeJerry wrote: ↑January 27th, 2019, 7:38 pm ... If we run the laws of physics in reverse, we'll end up at the beginning. I think this is irrelevant for the question of free will.
Reminds me of some article from absolutely eons ago, I think in the magazine Discovery, about "the direction of time."
I know I still have the issue but cannot find it, but the article was either in part an interview with Stephen Hawking or based on something he'd written; to the effect that some time in the future the universe will reach an apogee, cease expanding, & contract; at which point (per example in the article) broken teacups will leap up off the floor & reassemble themselves.
As for free will, also eons ago the English actor & stage director Jonathan Miller (who began his adult life in medical school & whose father was a psychiatrist) hosted a multi-part series on PBS called "Madness." (Some episodes or parts of episodes available on YouTube)
He was going on about the brain, how the brain is viewed in neuroscience (before neuroscience became fashionable), & the techno. metaphor of "hard-wired," & suggested that if we believed our personalities et al. were determined by neuro-wiring, then no free will.
My personal view after years of pondering this business of determinism & free will is that we are metaphorically (philosophically) stuck in the 19th century: almost entirely consumed by romanticism or romantic idealism (lovely in literature; horrible in life): the single branch of the tree determinism. We still debate the merits of capitalism & communism, altho both seem to me by-products of determinism.
Often Providence enters the conversation, so we can say "That's the way God planned it," whether to eschew responsibility, suppress imagined inferiors, or both & more.
