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Books

Freedom: An Impossible Reality by Raymond Tallis

This issue we consider ultimate human realities as Raymond Tallis has the intention of proving free will.

In the subtitle of his highly intriguing new book, Prof. Raymond Tallis calls free will ‘an impossible reality’. Though presumably somewhat tongue-in-cheek, this phrase is appropriate in capturing something of what has fascinated philosophers about free will over the centuries: it seems it cannot be, and yet nevertheless it must be. Given that all events in the natural world seem to follow the unbreakable patterns which we call ‘laws of nature’, it might appear that our actions could not be free, at least in the significant sense of having genuine alternative options for action available to us. If all natural events follow natural laws without exception, our actions could never have been otherwise, and thus cannot be freely chosen.

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