Steven Pinker & The Fear of Determinism

There was a young man who said "Damn!"

It grieves me to think that I am
Predestined to move
In a circumscribed groove:
In fact, not a bus, but a tram.
(Attributed to Maurice E. Hare, 1905)

"One fear of determinism is a gaping existential anxiety: that deep down we are not in control of our own choices. All our brooding and agonizing over the right thing to do is pointless, it would seem, because everything has already been preordained by the state of our brains. If you suffer from this anxiety, I suggest the following experiment.

Mindfulness Affects Brain Matter: Jeffrey Schwartz, The Mind and the Brain: Neuroplasticity and the Power of Mental Force

Mindfulness Affects Brain Matter: Jeffrey Schwartz, The Mind and the Brain: Neuroplasticity and the Power of Mental Force.

Mind over matter, anyone? The question would be rejected by those who endorse the modern view of consciousness, which appeals to hard-liners in cognitive science, neuroscience, evolutionary psychology, or behavioral genetics, all of whom would support some material explanation for consciousness.

Freedom of Will & The Myth of The Third Alternative

Freedom of Will & The Myth of The Third Alternative.

We each believe that we possess an Ego, Self, or Final Center of Control, from which we choose what we shall do at every fork in the road of time. To be sure, we sometimes have the sense of being dragged along despite ourselves, by internal processes which, though they come from within our minds, nevertheless seem to work against our wishes. But on the whole we still feel that we can choose what we shall do. Whence comes this sense of being in control?