determinism

Genes do not make an individual homosexual. They play their part, but so does the rest of the universe.

You don't choose to choose what you choose in life!

The cause-effect sequences in our brains are just as determining, just as inescapable, as anywhere else in Nature.

What each individual wills is obstructed by everyone else, and what emerges is something that no one willed.

...if in the heat of the dispute he insists and asks, 'Am I not the master of throwing myself out of the window?' I shall answer him, no; that whilst he preserves his reason there is no probability that the desire of proving his free agency, will become a motive sufficiently powerful to make him sacrifice his life to the attempt: if, notwithstanding this, to prove he is a free agent, he should actually precipitate himself from the window, it would not be a sufficient warranty to conclude he acted freely, but rather that it was the violence of his temperament which spurred him on to this folly. Madness is a state, that depends upon the heat of the blood, not upon the will. A fanatic or a hero, braves death as necessarily as a more phlegmatic man or a coward flies from it.

I know that certain minds would regard as audacious the idea of relating the laws which preside over the play of our organs to those laws which govern inanimate bodies; but, although novel, this truth is none the less incontestable. To hold that the phenomena of life are entirely distinct from the general phenomena of nature is to commit a grave error, it is to oppose the continued progress of science.

You is not you until you see the path of your faith.

Genetics, accidents of birth or events in early childhood have left criminals' brains and bodies with measurable flaws predisposing them to committing assault, murder and other antisocial acts. .... Many offenders also have impairments in their autonomic nervous system, the system responsible for the edgy, nervous feeling that can come with emotional arousal. This leads to a fearless, risk-taking personality, perhaps to compensate for chronic under-arousal. Many convicted criminals, like the Unabomber, have slow heartbeats. It also gives them lower heart rates, which explains why heart rate is such a good predictor of criminal tendencies. The Unabomber, Ted Kaczynski, for example, had a resting heart rate of just 54 beats per minute, which put him in the bottom 3 per cent of the population.

Thought isn't a form of energy. So how on Earth can it change material processes? That question has still not been answered.

Free will is the sensation of making a choice. The sensation is real, but the choice seems illusory. Laws of physics determine the future.

Few indeed are those who get a choice. We do as we are told. We stand or fall beside those who were born near to us, who look as we do, who speak the same words, and all the while we know as little of the reasons why as does the dust we return to.

Individual free choices_ can only be the expression of an __ndividual free will_.The notion of an __ndividual free will_ generating __ndividual free choices_ creates a much needed consequence: personal accountability.Personal accountability is vital for a primitive, immature human organization based on reprehension or praise.The permanent interaction of a unique inherited Nature (and maybe a unique __oul_) with a unique nurture (environment), will always determine all our __ndividual free choices_, from cradle to grave. It is impossible for the individual to be sentient before birth and choose these two or three unique factors.The logic of holding someone personally accountable for a __on-chosen_ choice eludes me.The notion of individual free will can at best be a __ut felt_ illusion, but can never have logical relevance.What sort of human (and divine!) organization can be based on the consequence of a __ut felt_ illusion?-Our current one; primitive, illogical, unstable and permanently conflictual.Be it for all individual choices or all differences, the definitive ban of the illusionary notion of personal accountability is the missing step that will lead to human maturity.How__ your __ut_ now?

Events fall into a pattern that we can only discern retrospectively. We credit ourselves with far more agency than we actually possess. Things happen because they happen.

Evolutionary biology is imperialistic, overtaking entire fields of endeavor simply by attaching the prefix bio _ or neuro -- to their names: bioethics, no comics, even, God help us, neurotheology. Its logic is deployed against helpless laymen as a bully's truncheon or an argument stopper.

Women, churchgoers, and conservative were more likely than men, nonchurch goers, and liberals to disagree with the reductionist (neural) account of human life.

Not that chance dominated events in the early Solar System, for scientific determinism was also functioning. But chance is an essential factor in all evolutionary events, and the birth and development of our planetary system were not exceptions.

If it is irrational and hypocritical to hold a minor to the same standard of behaviour control as a mature adult, it is equally unjust to hold a traumatised and neurologically impaired adult to the same standard as one not so afflicted

This is one of man's oldest riddles. How can the independence of human volition be harmonized with the fact that we are integral parts of a universe which is subject to the rigid order of nature's laws?