From a discussion on the subject in Medium.com Debates about free will are fun but, like arguments about the existence of God, they are fun because the subject doesn’t exist. It’s like arguing over whether Santa is fat. I’m not saying free will doesn’t exist. I'm saying the idea of "free will" is part of our religious mythology. The concept makes no sense in the world we happen to inhabit. To be more precise, human behavior is inexplicable in principle. The “explanation” that it arises out of a sum of deterministic laws of nature doesn’t survive close examination. Boiled down to essentials, the argument against free will is saying that a given individual, faced with situation “A” will do exactly the same thing again if faced with exactly the same situation “A”. However, it is clearly impossible to specify “situation A” precisely. To mention just one tiny part of the problem, it is impossible to specify the “state” of a synapse precisely due to Quantum Mechanica...

We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.  T. S. Eliot - Little Gidding I have been writing for a long time about the concept of "supermind" and the "dragon". Groups of humans - armies, governments - have a life of their own and thrive at the expense of the humans that oppose them - even their own members.  These groups steal our identity and prevent us from thinking for ourselves. It's all true, of course, but what is new is the total acceptance of the situation. Comfort almost. This is the human condition. Our "minds" function as part of a whole. It may be a mistake to "analyze" - to break things down into pieces, but indulge me for a moment while I describe things that make up our "minds" that are usually regarded as something happening between our ears. The brain, especially considered as part of the body (Damasio). The functio...

Interesting Saponlsky lecture here Strong ties between Obsessive Compulsive Disease (OCD) and religious ritual. Schizophrenia and magical thinking. Superstition as a sign of brain damage. Verified in rats. Temporal Lobe Epilepsy (fun example - St Paul) Serious  Neophobia - dislike of new things Hypergraphia - obsessive writing Obsessive interest in religion More here - a bit too much weight on pseudo - evolutionary theories. The idea that whatever we see in nature must have an adaptive value. Sets up for asking "what is a mild version of schizophrenia"? Schyzotypalism  social withdrawal metamagical thinking  frenzied new age ideas concrete religious belief  1/2 crazy shamans