On Thursday the nation decides. Each one of us will be free to choose how or whether to vote. But if you’ve been paying any attention at all to the findings of modern psychology, you might doubt whether your vote is truly free at all. There is a mass of compelling evidence that all our choices, including our electoral ones, are strongly affected by myriad unconscious and often irrational factors…
ReadSometimes what is needed is not balance but someone really to rock the boat.
ReadWe want the power of choice to entail the power to guarantee the best outcome. We should get rid of that illusion, embrace uncertainty and save anxiety for the choices that really matter.
ReadFree will explored. Laurie Taylor talks to Julian Baggini about his latest work which considers the concept of freedom. He argues against the idea that free will is an illusion due to a combination of genes, environment and personal history. Instead he posits a sliding scale of freedom which allows for the possibility of individual agency and responsibility.
ReadThose who despair of free will only do so because they have an unrealistic idea of what it involves. They have a fantasy of a mysterious, pure, free-floating will that acts independently of nature or nurture. They think that the only kind of real responsibility is ultimate responsibility, and that unless we can choose everything from our genders to our personalities to our preferences, we cannot be responsible for what we do.
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