Presents the author’s view of the best current positions on certain core philosophical and psychological problems. These positions together suggest a skeptical or nihilist perspective modified by evolutionary psychology and contemporary philosophy that embraces our desire to live as best we can and the relative and psychological reality of values, free will and other phenomena while recognizing limitations on their foundations and our understanding. Readers may want to start with the first entry. - Marc Krellenstein (personal info here)
The so-called compatabilist position embraced by some philosophers seems hard to refute: namely, that we seem to have free will (it is the only world we know), and might as well act as if we do (and treat people as responsible for their actions), but no, not really — everything is physically determined. The only exception to complete physical determinism arises from quantum uncertainties — the probabilistic nature of behavior at the level of elementary particles. In principle this uncertainty continues all the way up to our macro reality, but is so rare at that level as to be safely ignored. Some have argued that these quantum uncertainties are nonetheless what give us freely chosen human behavior, but the arguments for this are so far unconvincing. Still, the puzzle of how conscious observation of a physical state resolves these quantum uncertainties remains.