Tag Archives | Free Will

Free Will, Magick, and Deity

By on July 28, 2012 in News, Podcasts 0

The Infinite and the Beyond — Podcast: Episode 027 — Free Will, Magick, and Deity

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In the latest episode of The Infinite and the Beyond, we explore magick and creativity as we speak with the mysterious electronic music composer Alka who was kind of enough to come on the show and share his music with us which is featured throughout the episode. In A Corner in the Occult we learn about famous, mystic, poet, artist, and engraver William Blake. Highly influential to artists and occultists, Blake has been a focus for scholars since his death as he continues to fascinate and inspire new generations. We learn about the phrase, “So Mote It Be” in the Essence of Magick. Have you ever considered the phrase itself and what exactly it implies as a practitioner of magick? Find out in this episode! Also during the show, I read listener email, we hear a great track by Donna Lewis and to close we revisit the ideas of Free Will, Magick, and Deity. Do you have free will in regards to your personal religious theology? If so, what does this mean in how you view deity? Find out this and more in this electronic episode!

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Burundanga: The Drug Against Free Will

By on June 15, 2011 in News 16

BurandangaIt turns out that ‘free will’ is a brain process that can be shut off. Wired UK explores the plant-derived drug — currently all the rage in the South American criminal underworld — that does this:

Burundanga is a scary drug. According to news reports from Ecuador, the last thing a motorist could recall, after waking up minus his car and possessions, was being approached by two women; in Venezuela, a girl came round in hospital to find she had been abducted and sexually assaulted. Each had been doped with burundanga, an extract of the brugmansia plant containing high levels of the psychoactive chemical scopolamine.

News reports allude to a sinister effect: that the drug removes free will, effectively turning victims into suggestible human puppets. Although not fully understood by neuroscience, free will is seen as a highly complex neurological ability and one of the most cherished of human characteristics. Clearly, if a drug can eliminate this, it highlights a stark vulnerability at the core of our species.

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Experimental Philosophy And The Problem of Free Will

By on March 18, 2011 in News 92
Plato & Aristotle (Portait by Raffaello Sanzio)

Plato & Aristotle (Portait by Raffaello Sanzio)

ScienceDaily reports:

Philosophers have argued for centuries, millennia actually, about whether our lives are guided by our own free will or are predetermined as the result of a continuous chain of events over which we have no control.On the one hand, it seems like everything that happens has come kind of causal explanation; on the other hand, when we make decisions, it seems to us like we have the free will to make different decisions.

Most people seem to favor free will, and while many, across a range of cultures, reject what is referred to as determinism, they remain conflicted over the role of personal responsibility in situations that require moral judgements, said Shaun Nichols, a professor of philosophy and cognitive science at the University of Arizona.

Nichols is part of a growing number of researchers who are gaining insights into this philosophical dilemma by applying experimental methods commonly used by developmental psychologists and other social scientists.

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