Practicing Free Will and Understanding Why
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Wednesday, January 21, 2015

This class is about practicing free will, about ethics and what we know of the world (science, history and personal experience).

The aim of the class is to build a case that describes why it might satisfy our deepest desire to lead our free will to thoughts and behaviors that align with the direction of the emerging Universe.  By rehearsing this case, I am practicing.

Here are links for discussion this week:

 Intuitive Ethics, by Jonathan Haidt and Craig Joseph
            This short paper presents the theory that humans have "factory-installed" sensitivity to particular types of moralities.  These sensitivities produce "flashes of affect" in relevant situations.  The modules are common to humans.  However, different cultures associate the "flashes of affect" with different activities and emphases.  As the associations are "learned," they become intuitive.

 TED Talk by Jill Boylte Taylor on her "stroke of insight"
     As a neuro-anatomist she describes the plasticity of the brain and her experience reshaping her own brain as she recovered from a severe stroke.
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