Freedom: The Impossible Reality with Prof. Raymond Tallis

The question of free will has preoccupied philosophers for millennia. In recent years the debate has been reinvigorated by the findings of neuroscience and, for some, the notion that we have free will has finally been laid to rest.
#raymondtallis #dowehavefreewill? #arewefree?

Not so, says Raymond Tallis. In his quest to reconcile our practical belief in our own agency with our theoretical doubts, Tallis advances powerful arguments for the reality of freedom. He challenges the idea that the laws of nature wire us into a causally closed world that imprisons. He shows that our capacity to discover and exploit these laws is central to understanding the nature of voluntary action and to reconciling free will with our status as material beings.

Bringing his familiar verve and insight to this deep and most intriguing philosophical question, one that impacts most directly on our lives and touches on nearly every other philosophical problem – of consciousness, of time, of the nature of the natural world, and of our unique place in the cosmos – Professor Tallis takes us to the heart of what we are. By our freedom he reveals our extraordinary nature more clearly.

This a recording of a live online talk delivered on January 12th 2022.

Professor Raymond Tallis FmedSci, FRCP, FRSA

[gor]

I need to leave a comment because no one has done so yet and this is such a great presentation. I respect Tallis a lot as a philosopher--a brutally honest thinker who seriously engages with a lot of the issues some philosophers handwave away.

[davidrandell]

Max Stirner 178 years ago gave us the “creative nothing.” “The Unique and Its Property “, 2017 Landstreicher translation. Tallis adds little. As for his Stone Age physics he refuses to update it. No surprise. “The Final Theory: Rethinking Our Scientific Legacy “, Mark McCutcheon.