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Download [Unfin] The Unfinishable Scroll and Beyond: Mark Sharlow's Blogs, July 2008 to March 2011 About This Document This document is an archive of Mark F. Sharlow's two blogs, The Unfinishable Scroll and Religion: the Next Version. The archive covers the first two and a half years (more or less) of the blogs' existence. Some of the posts cover ideas and topics not found in Sharlow's papers. Subject areas include religion, science, mind, ontology, epistemology, and politics. The blog posts here are arranged in chronological order (oldest to newest) for each blog. This differs from the ordering of the original blogs, which were in reverse chronological order. There is an index for each blog (see links below). There also is a third index that covers a key part of the first blog. All these indices retain the original reverse chronological order. References are indicated by square brackets (for example, [gtnv], [improb], or [1]) or occasionally by asterisks. Many of the reference notes are at the end of the document, but some are within individual posts. Some of the references were in the original blogs; others were added later. Some links that originally pointed to external sites now point to the references at the end of the document. The posts have been reformatted for inclusion in this document. Many links have been changed to make the document self-contained. However, some of the links in this document still go to external sites. Please exercise customary caution with these sites. The author's website, at the time of this writing, was located at http://www.eskimo.com/~msharlow. The blogs were located at http://www.eskimo.com/~msharlow/cgi-bin/blosxom.cgi (The Unfinishable Scroll) and http://www.eskimo.com/~msharlow/cgi-bin/rel/blosxom.cgi (Religion: the Next Version). Please report any issues (including broken links) to Mark Sharlow at msharlow at usermail dot com. To begin reading, choose one of the following links: Part I. The Unfinishable Scroll Part II. Religion: the Next Version 1 Part I. The Unfinishable Scroll Index for The Unfinishable Scroll Date Link to Article Category 03/02/11 Some Closing Remarks on "The Anti-Dawkins Papers" religion/atheism/god_delusion Why There Very Probably Is a God - but Not the Kind Some 10/13/10 religion People Want 10/12/10 Some Thoughts on the Ontological Argument religion 10/03/10 The Trouble with the Supernatural religion 10/01/10 Let's Change the Subject and Talk About...Snails! nature 09/30/10 Announcing Sharlow's Scratchpad general 05/02/10 How Real Spiritual Experience Might Work religion Mind Is to Brain as Digestion Is to Digestive Tract. Oh, 05/02/10 mind Really? 05/01/10 Am I Really Defending Religion? religion 2 05/01/10 The Hidden Tension Within Belief in God religion 04/08/10 A Final Word on Leprechology and the Courtier's Reply religion/atheism The Courtier's Reply Exposed: Why Dawkins Still Needs 04/02/10 religion/atheism Theology Why Dawkins Needs to Study Theology - Especially if There 03/17/10 religion/atheism Is No God 02/21/10 Say It Isn't So, Mrs. Obama! The New War on Fat Children political 01/12/10 What Is an Atheist (and Are You One)? religion/atheism 01/11/10 Evolution Has No Purpose. So What? religion/science_and_religion 01/11/10 Why I Don't Believe in So-Called Intelligent Design Theory religion/science_and_religion Happy Holidays! (And Incidentally, Science Can't Disprove 12/25/09 religion/science_and_religion Religion) 12/17/09 Is Everything Abstract? ontology 12/15/09 Beyond Atheism, Theism, and Agnosticism: What Am I? religion 11/06/09 My Other Blog Is Now Complete religion 09/01/09 Study Does Not Show that Fat People Are Brain-Damaged political Anti-Dawkins Paper No. 11: A Summary of the Papers, and 07/14/09 religion/atheism/god_delusion What It All Means 07/13/09 Anti-Dawkins Paper No. 10: Hate by Any Other Name? religion/atheism/god_delusion 07/09/09 Anti-Dawkins Paper No. 9: Of Science and Miracles religion/atheism/god_delusion 07/08/09 Why Science Cannot Disprove the Afterlife religion/science_and_religion 3 Anti-Dawkins Paper No. 8: Are Scientists and Other Smart 07/06/09 religion/atheism/god_delusion People Atheists? Anti-Dawkins Paper No. 7: Dawkins Misrepresents Some 06/25/09 religion/atheism/god_delusion Opposing Ideas and Thinkers 06/24/09 Anti-Dawkins Paper No. 6: Does All Religion Cause Evil? religion/atheism/god_delusion Anti-Dawkins Paper No. 5: The Causes of Religion Cannot 06/22/09 religion/atheism/god_delusion Prove Religion False Anti-Dawkins Paper No. 4: Evolution and the So-Called 06/20/09 religion/atheism/god_delusion Illusion of Design Anti-Dawkins Paper No. 3: Dodging the Issue of Personal 06/19/09 religion/atheism/god_delusion Religious Experience Anti-Dawkins Paper No. 2: Why Dawkins' Main Argument 05/26/09 religion/atheism/god_delusion Against God Is Wrong 05/18/09 Anti-Dawkins Paper No. 1: Overlooking the Idea of God religion/atheism/god_delusion 05/03/09 The Unfinishable Book Is Now Free general 03/19/09 Drawing a Blank: In Search of Empty Consciousness mind 02/13/09 Merry Darwinmas - Now Let's Get Evolution Right! religion/science_and_religion 12/31/08 The Worst Atheist Argument in the World? religion/atheism 10/29/08 What's New on My Site in October 2008 general 09/24/08 Why Libertarians Should Tolerate the Big Bailout political 09/06/08 New Political Manifesto Goes Online political 4 08/07/08 Spirit without the Supernatural mind 07/26/08 Announcing New and Republished Books in Philosophy general 07/23/08 New Ebooks on Science and Religion general 07/23/08 Confused about Science, Religion, or Morality? Lets TOK! knowledge 07/11/08 Still No Disproof of Free Will mind 07/03/08 Welcome to my Blog! general 5 The Unfinishable Scroll Starts Here 07/03/08 Welcome to My Blog! The Unfinishable Scroll is open for browsing, controversy and fun. Politics? Religion? Science? Snails? I plan to talk about all of 'em and more. Stay tuned... 07/11/08 Still No Disproof of Free Will Has science debunked free will? A recent article Nature Neuroscience [1] tells of some research that suggests the answer is "yes." An article in The Wall Street Journal Online [2] explores this research - and its implications for free will - in less technical terms. According to the research, our brains can show specific kinds of activity about 10 seconds before we make conscious decisions. The findings suggest that when you make a conscious decision, your brain already has "decided" as much as 10 seconds earlier. So what is the role of your conscious decision? Does your act of deciding do anything? It seems as if your feeling of conscious decision is just a side effect of brain activity that already has happened. As one of the researchers pointed out (in [2]), this makes things look bad for free will. It seems as if science might have debunked free will. But wait a minute! Things just aren't that simple. There is a way of understanding these findings that does NOT rule out free will. Maybe your brain starts a decision a while before you consciously decide. However, you can believe this and still believe in free will. All you have to do is admit that your actual consciousness includes more than your so-called conscious mind. Psychologists (especially psychoanalysts) have long claimed that people have unconscious minds as well as their ordinary conscious minds. Philosopher Ned Block [3] has suggested that contents of the so-called unconscious might actually be conscious in a sense. This raises the possibility that your so-called 6 unconscious mind might not truly be empty of consciousness, but might have a consciousness of its own. This would be a consciousness that you normally can't think or talk about - but that is a real part of you anyhow. (I've explored this idea further in my book, From Brain to Cosmos [4] [fbtc].) Now what if you made a decision, but the decision happened in your unconscious mind? Since your unconscious mind is part of you, the decision truly would be your own - just as if you had made it with your ordinary conscious mind. For all we know, it could even be a free choice. (Some of the people who commented on the Wall Street Journal article made these two points about the unconscious. [5]) But what is really interesting is that your so-called unconscious choice might really be a conscious choice. This would happen if the so-called "unconscious mind" has some consciousness. Even if this were the case, you might not be able to think or say that you had decided, or act on the decision. This might be what is happening in the study in Nature Neuroscience. The brain events that happen 10 seconds before the "conscious" decision might really be, or contain, the person's own free decision, involving conscious processing of a sort. However, it is a decision that he or she cannot yet think or talk about, or act upon. In other words, free will and conscious choice might exist even if the neuroscientists' findings are right. The findings might show that we don't understand ourselves as well as we think. Specifically, they might show that the unconscious parts of ourselves are much more important than we usually suppose them to be. But the findings cannot debunk free will. Just think about that! (The argument I used in this post is not new.
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